Right Through Me
by deletrear
Summary: SELF INSERT WEEK 2k16. When most of your life is spent living in the background, it can be a bit intimidating to be thrust to the forefronts of a dramatic narrative. Luckily, Tamika Maihi is a self-insert, so you can trust her to always recover from a tragic backstory. — SI, gen.
1. 01 the seeking, the searching

**Title:** Right Through Me

 **Summary:** When most of your life is spent living in the background, it can be a bit intimidating to be thrust to the forefronts of a dramatic narrative. Luckily, Tamika Maihi is a self insert, so you can trust her to always recover from a tragic backstory. — SI, gen.

 **Rating:** M

 **Words:** _A lot._

 **Warnings:** Really graphic torture stuff, hooboy.

 **Disclaimer:** Disclaimed.

* * *

It is a thundering summer night in Whakatane when Tamika Maihi is born. She has her father's green eyes and nose and her grandfather's dark hair, but her brown skin is a trait that reaches far back into her mother's side, is apart of a tree whose roots run deep.

(Her dad cries when he holds her in his arms. Her two older brothers scramble to meet their new younger sister. Her eldest brother, she is told, falls in love with her instantly. Her second older brother, she finds out for herself, never quite outgrows the sharp spike of jealousy he feels looking at her baby face.)

For a short moment, she is the family's pride and joy. Their sweetheart, the only girl, the smartest and most well-behaved child yet. It's a point of celebration. There's no doubt in their minds that she'll go somewhere in life.

Three years later, her little brother is born.

Tamika loves him the minute she lays her eyes on him; remembers the rise of rapture in her chest vividly when he grabs her finger in his tight grip, the swell of protectiveness as he garbled and spoke to her.

Her two older brother's were thicker than thieves; there was no room for her in their camaraderie, but for the first time, three-year-old Tamika, with her hand on his chest feeling the rapid _thump-thump-thump_ of baby Erik's heartbeat, doesn't care.

Let them share their clothes and their jokes and their private smiles. She has Erik now.

Her mum is on maternity leave but she never seems to have enough time on her hands, between babysitting her nieces and nephews and raising her own kids, so Tamika does her best to ease the load. She babbles with Erik, teaches him his family roots, rubs his back when he's tired and sits dutifully whenever the bubba falls asleep on her. She's a good older sister. She's the best there ever could be.

Of course, while bubba Erik's first word is "what," his first name is _hers_.

Tamika is a Good Kid™. She likes to learn, and never complains when her dad gives her a book and asks her to be quiet; he works all day and she figures he could use the peace and quiet. She is well-written and polite. She's athletic, always in the Top Three during cross-country and is _exceptional_ at high jump. Her parents never need to scold her. This gives them more energy to focus on the fact that her eldest brother is failing all his classes except physical education.

Tamika's family is… _complicated_.

Her eldest brother is Willmarr, named after her father's grandfather, who fought and died in the second world war. Tamika has seen pictures of him. She privately thinks that great-granddad Willmarr looks like her maths teacher, Mr Blake. who is stern and mean and _gross_. She doesn't much like her great-granddad, but her dad maintains a strong hero worship of the dead man, so she keeps her opinion to herself.

 _(When doesn't she?)_

Willmarr—her _brother_ Willmarr, _not_ the war hero from 1945—is born colorblind, which is and always will be a shame because he is a very good artist, and he often sketched Tamika's face for her when she asked. Tall and stoutly built, he hands out smiles like candy. He enjoys laughing — has a high pitched giggle that charmed all the teachers at school — and does anything for a quick buck. He isn't academically gifted or particularly athletic, but everyone agrees that he's a sweet kid.

And for the longest time, Willmarr's dream is to be a pilot.

(He wasn't aware that he was incapable of this. The adults knew about it, whispered about it behind his back, but no one actually wanted to say it to his _face_. When she found out herself, she thought keeping the truth from him was the cruellest thing in the world.

His hopes have surpassed the sky by the time Tamika gathers the courage to tell him that pilots can't be colour-blind. He stares at her blankly for what feels like an eternity before he stoically turns and disappears into his room. By the next hour, all his model planes and helmets are dumped unceremoniously in the trash. He doesn't speak to her for weeks. To her, the world has ended and she is cowed into a guilty silence by the disapproving glares everyone gives her.)

The older one of the middle children is named Liam, and he's always been the tallest, the most handsome, of all of them. When he's young, he has a horrific stutter that's worsened with his habit for mumbling. Willmarr is the only one who can understand what he's saying, and acts as a translator for the rest of the family. It isn't until Liam is eight that they all realize that he is deaf in one ear.

Unlike Tamika, he doesn't have the brain for grammar and punctuation. Also unlike Tamika, he is a wizard with numbers. This is an aspect of himself that is shoved aside by something supposedly even better.

You see, Liam is also a natural in rugby league.

He's actually so good at it that everyone tells him that he'll have no trouble going pro if he keeps at it; and because rugby players don't need to know algebra, Liam forgets his interest in mathematics to dedicate his time training in his chosen sport.

(Nothing has ever expected anything of Liam, so no one is surprised when he barely graduates from high school. The only thing he has going for him is his rugby — never mind that his natural skill for maths was never nurtured because of the same people ridiculing him for it now.

Tamika sees it early—the damage that they have done to her brother, his resentment over the fact that they were so sure that he was dumb that they fooled him into believing it—and so, she can't get mad when he mocks her for getting straight A's.

 _Let him vent,_ she thinks as he balls up her report card and throws it in the bin, _who am I to stop him?_

She stays quiet; disappears into the wall and pretends she isn't there.)

When she is ten years old, she is sitting between her parents in the car. Her dad is driving. He's arguing with her mum, but ten year old Tamika is used to it by now, so apart from the instinctive response of fear that came with having people yell around her, she's hardly worried.

Until things veer sharply off course. Her mum says something to get a reaction, her dad descends into furious German ramblings, and then he lashes out to punch her.

But he forgets that Tamika is sitting between him. He has forgotten that she is there entirely. He hits her instead.

Until that point, she'd never been so much as touched in a way she didn't like—it's a jarring change, and she exists in shell-shock as her mum bundles her up and carries her away. She has an ice pack pressed to her bruising cheekbone and her little brother Erik clinging to her side, crying silently. Tamika's body doesn't even feel solid at this point, she feels as if she may sink through the floor.

Her mum is frothing at the mouth. She keeps on saying, _I should have left him years ago._

This is a pivotal moment of Tamika's life.

After that incident, Erik grows attached to their mum's side like he's trying to become her fifth limb. Their dad never hits Tamika again, but Erik still grows wary in the presence of him regardless. His eyes grow wide in fear whenever Tamika and their dad are alone in the room together. He's scared of violence, and he always has been, so when he leaves Tamika to her (— _always_ , even though he never hits her again, it is _always_ —) uncertain fate, Tamika wishes she could be surprised. She isn't.

(Her dad never apologises for hitting her. He's too proud for that. Instead, he gifts her a bulky computer, some new clothes and the book that she asked for a year ago as an apology, and goes around saying that she is his " _favorite child_." He tells her about his rocky marriage with her mum, whispers about how horrible a person she is until Tamika is firmly on his side. Erik, who has been getting the same treatment from her mum about her dad, steadily grows distant from her. They have chosen their sides. It is _not_ with each other.)

Tamika is the one who never _needed_ for attention when she was younger, who was presumed to never _want_ for it. She was smart, you see, and athletic, and she could take care of herself. She didn't need someone breathing over her neck, so she never had one to do it. She is the grey areas, just another piece of the wallpaper, a perfectly empty doll. Only ever the center of attention when she's the butt of the joke, which is coincidentally the only time they remember she's _there_.

The girl who is nothing more than a ghost until her parents need to gossip about each other to her, and then she's suddenly their favorite child. So while it may look like she's the kid who's loved the most, truth be told, she's probably liked the _least_.

When her parents finally divorce, it is 2011, and her dad has been promoted. His work wants him to move to Eastern Europe. The pay is so good that he'd be a fool to let the opportunity pass by, so he takes it, gets a quickie divorce, and buys two tickets to Sokovia.

Tamika is thirteen and skipping school by the weeks when he offers her the second ticket. Her mum watches the exchange with tears running down her face, sobbing into her hands, while Liam shakes her head in the background and whispers, don't go with him.

But Tamika is thirteen, see, and she's started high school and it isn't nearly as great as she was told. She has two friends who like each other more than they like her, three brothers closer with each other than they are to her, and parents who never see her until it's too late.

See, Tamika is thirteen and _tired_.

And as her mum sobs but does not tell her to stay, as her brothers cry and sniffle and glare at their shoes but do not speak up, Tamika makes the decision to put herself first. She grabs the ticket and packs her bags.

(Liam helps her with her suitcase as her dad gets into the truck. It's 2am and freezing cold, so he gives her his over-sized flannel coat and doesn't say a word about it. The others wait at the doorstep, silent like they're in mourning.

She closes the trunk and refuses to meet his eyes, but despite her best efforts, she can't pretend that he isn't crying. He's being quiet about it but he _can't stop sniffing._

When he speaks, his voice is small and thin. It isn't a tone she's ever heard on him before. "Don't leave." He mutters, just like he used to do when he was a kid. He meets her eyes for a fraction of a second before he looks at his shoes. "It isn't too late to change your mind."

Tamika has never been encouraged to speak her mind at the expense of others. There is something in her body blending her insides, and it's odd, because her stomach is turning and her throat is clogged but her blood runs cold and her bones are like steel. She is heavy with the grief of leaving her family behind but her heart feels hollow. She is both the chaos and the calm. The feelings conflict and turn her brain to mush. She doesn't have it in her to be self-conscious about her words at this point.

She hunches in on herself. "What's keeping me here?"

Liam looks hurt. He keeps his eyes on the ground. " _We_ are," He says in a strained voice. " _Us_. Your _family_."

"And if I stay? What then?" She knows that after the novelty of her remaining wears off, things will go right back to the way they were. Perhaps with more animosity, at best. If she leaves, she will not be able to feel their resentment with the oceans between them. If she turns back and lets that plane take off without her, she will forever be the pariah.

"Don't worry, Li," She rubs her nose and steps away, eyes burning but face stony. She wants to cry but her body won't _let her_. "You won't miss me much."

And the only way she could say that without breaking down was because it was _true_. He was good at ignoring her when she _was_ there; it would be the easiest thing in the world to do it when she _wasn't_.

And so, in a few short hours, Tamika and her father board a plane to Sokovia.)

* * *

Tamika is introduced to her father's new boss a month after they settle down on a Tuesday.

His name is Baron Von Strucker, and he is in the business of miracles.

He tells her that she will do her father proud. He tells her that she will become a superhero. He tells her that her sacrifice will mean her father's rise to glory, and as a dutiful daughter, she should be honored that he volunteered her for the program. She would become his prized possession if the experiments succeeded.

She doesn't know how to say no to a man who lies so easily to her (and she knows he's lying, she has spent her entire life watching and observing so she knows a liar when she sees one) so she simply

 _doesn't_.

Tamika looks over her shoulder as two men march her by her elbows into the next room and sees her dad staring at her with a proud, slightly anxious smile. He gives her a thumbs up all the way until she disappears behind the corner.

The men escorting her don't speak or look at her, and Tamika's never been the type to act unprovoked, so the trip is taken in silence. They take her to a shower block and push her under one of the shower heads. They cross their arms and stare.

Tamika knows what they are waiting for, and her entire being shies away from it. She curls in on herself, feeling sick and cold, but they don't move a muscle.

"Strip." One says when the silence stretches on too long. "And shower."

 _No._ It's her first thought, small and weedy. If she said it out loud, the guards might laugh at her.

"Hurry up," Says the other, looking annoyed with her. "We don't have all day."

It suddenly sinks in that they're speaking German. It's an odd thing to notice but Tamika latches onto it, the oddity of the workers speaking German in Eastern Europe, where the languages are Slavic in nature, and focuses her mind onto it with an intensity she usually reserved for reading.

" _Now_!" The first one shouts impatiently and Tamika, trembling and embarrassed and _crying_ , jumps to it. She strips and washes off under the warm spray for two minutes before the shower turns off without her consent, and her watchers shove pajamas into her arms. Shaking, she puts on the plain grey pajamas, which stick awkwardly to her wet skin.

She's ushered into another room where there is a medical team waiting. All of the doctors are occupied with patients dressed in the same pajamas as Tamika, trembling and looking out of their depths, when it sinks in.

 _This isn't an honor at all,_ thinks Tamika with a lump in her throat. _We're going to die here._

One of the handlers behind her pushes her shoulder and points at a doctor whose patient has left. "There. Go."

Tamika doesn't want to at all, would rather stay in this spot forever and melt into the walls until they forget she's there, but she catches a glimpse of a gun on one of the men standing next to the doors and she _moves_.

She walks over and sits stiffly in front of the doctor, who immediately takes some of her blood. "Name?" The doctor asks, and they sound like a she, which is for some reason very jarring. The medical mask covers most of their face but looking closely, yes, those are feminine eyes.

Tamika barely manages to choke out her name loud enough.

"Age?"

"T-thirteen…"

"Any medical conditions?"

"Uh… i-irregular heart b-beat."

The questions continue until the doctor writes down a complete medical record for her. Tamika has stopped trembling by the end of it, but that doesn't mean she's calmed down. If anything, she's even worse. Her muscles are locked together and she's sitting in this chair in front of a normal doctor under fluorescent lights, and there isn't a single weapon or a pair of hostile eyes on her, but she is so certain that she's going to die that she can hardly breathe.

Did her dad know? She wonders as the doctor dismisses her and a handler approaches her to herd her into another room. Did he have any idea what he was doing when he volunteered her? Was this the company he'd really been working for for the past thirteen years?

It feels like someone has thrust a knife into her stomach and twisted it. The betrayal is hot and ugly and so overwhelming that the tears are an angry, abrupt thing.

She is taken to a large cell filled with people all dressed like her. No one looks up at her when the cell door is unlocked. When she doesn't immediately enter, she is pushed in by the guards. She stumbles awkwardly over her own feet as the door slams shut behind her.

Someone looks up at her, sees her red eyes and chubby cheeks, and smiles sardonically. "Not what you were expecting when you volunteered, huh, kid?" She speaks in stilted English.

"I… I didn't volunteer…" She replies. She manages not to sob. It's a weak victory, when her chest starts to concave. "I don't _want to be here_."

The person winces emphatically. "That's rough." She says, shrugging, and offers no words of comfort. Tamika stares at the lady in horror, but the lady is no longer concerned with her. She's tipped her head back and is tapping her hands against her thighs in a beat.

Tamika inhales sharply and picks a spot to sit and curl in on herself. She buries her face in her knees and prays for for someone to get her out of here. There is no way this is good. She wants to leave. It was a _mistake_ to leave New Zealand. She couldn't have ever imagined this is what awaited her in Sokovia.

 _It wasn't supposed to be like this._

She clamps both hands over her mouth as her body is racked with sobs that she feels in her bones.

Sokovia was supposed to be their big break. It wasn't _supposed_ to be—

An arm drapes around her shoulders, startling her. Tamika looks up and meets the brown eyes on someone who can't be older than sixteen. She has curly brown hair and smudged makeup running down her face, likely from the quick shower she was forced to take. She looks concerned, and speaks to Tamika is a language she knows enough about to recognize as Romanian.

"I don't… I don't speak that… English? Do you speak English?"

The teenager tilts her head and frowns, shaking her head. She says something in Romanian again, before blinking and switching gears. She speaks in another language that's either Spanish or Italian, Tamika doesn't know a thing about those languages, before sighing when Tamika continues staring blankly.

Tamika wipes her nose and asks in German. "Do you speak German?"

The girl jumps and nods. "Ja!" She grins, pleased, and try as she might, Tamika can't return it. "Are you okay? Why are you crying?"

Tamika hesitates. The reception she received from the last lady was less than encouraging, and the teenager beside her seemed much too happy to be unwilling. Tamika had the impression that most if not all of the people in this cell volunteered for this opportunity. How _horrifying_.

But the teenager stares at her in open concern, not through her or around her, and her arm is solid around Tamika's shoulders. Her body is solid. She is real. She is awake and this is happening.

 _God_ , what did she do to deserve this?

"I did not volunteer for this." She whispers. "My dad brought me here. I do not know what is happening. I am afraid. I shouldn't be here."

"You are _unwilling_?" The teenager looks owlish. "How did your father force you into this? You are clearly a foreigner." She gestures to Tamika's dark skin and shrugs. "How are you here?"

"We moved from the south for his job. He took me to work saying that his boss wanted to meet me, and then I was forced into participating."

The teenager scowled. "He deceived you. Manipulated you. That is _disgusting_. He is your father, you said?"

"Yeah…"

"Where is your mother?"

"In our home country with my brothers."

"Will they not look for you?" She asks. "You are their family. If you do not contact them, they will worry."

"I don't think so…" Tamika clenches her eyes shut and sighs. "We didn't leave on the best terms, my family and I. They will resent me for not contacting them but they will not stretch their necks out for me."

"Truly?" She seems appalled. Tamika shrugs. The teenager purses her lips. "That is unacceptable! And they call themselves your family? Bullshit! If you do not want to be here then you should not be here!"

"I can't leave now that I'm here." Tamika says as the cell door opens and another brunette girl enters. She is here of her own volition, Tamika realizes, it's obvious in the confidence of her walk. "I asked. I'm here to stay." She lies, but as far as she's concerned, it's the truth.

Gut instincts tells her to keep quiet. Pleading to be let out will not help her case.

The teenager looks like she wants to yell about that. Tamika can't imagine that's a good idea. She asks quickly, "You volunteered?"

"Yes." The teen answers. "I am to be apart of an experiment to restore Sokovia to glory and assist in the war effort against the Americans anyway I can." She grits her teeth together and spits something out in Romanian. "The _Americans_ took my family away from me. Hydra promised a way to avenge them. My little sister…"

"Hydra?"

"That is the name of the agency we are trusting with our lives." She says succinctly, nodding. "Hydra. They are — "

"I know who they are." Tamika cuts off before descending into mute horror. She is a well-read young lady, passed history with flying colours. She knows exactly what Hydra is.

Her dad is a _Nazi_?

She thinks of great-granddad Willmarr who died a "war hero" in 1945. Of her dad's hero worship. Of the portrait of her _Nazi great-grandfather_ sitting on their living room wall.

She feels _sick_.

"I'm going to die here…" She whispers for the first time out loud. The teenager frowns, not understanding her English. Tamika feels all sense of her body disappear as she succumbs to the numb horror. "I'm going to _die_ here."

"What?" The teen shakes her head and huffs. "Oh, did I not tell you? I am called Helena. What is your name?"

She offers a half-hearted response as the severity of the situation begins to process in her mind. "… Tamika."

"It is nice to be introduced to you, Tamika, even though your unwillingness makes it less than ideal."

Tamika isn't listening. Because for the first time in her life, she has realized…

… that she hates her father.

She will go to her grave hating him.

(She doesn't know, but as soon as Tamika is taken out of sight, her dad is taken behind the chemical shed and shot in the back of the head. He was emotionally compromised. They couldn't trust him to remain loyal to them after he found out the true experiment, so they didn't risk a leak and put a stop to it before it could even begin.

Truth is, years later, Tamika isn't the type of person to even care.)

* * *

Helena dies in the first phase of testing.

Tamika writhes and pulls at her leather straps as liquid fire tears through her body and loses track of time after the third day of pain.

Baron Von Strucker visits her personally, smiling proudly. "The first time is always the worst." He tells her, stroking her arm.

She twitches like she's been electrocuted. There is a mouth guard stopping her from talking, put there to stop her from biting off her tongue. She can't stop making pathetic wounded animal sounds. Her sheets are soaked with sweat and she can't feel her body.

Helena died, but Tamika is not so lucky.

She gets her second injection. Her howls scrape her throat with its ferocity, and she swallows blood until she's choking on it.

* * *

The injections don't do anything to alter her cells the way Strucker wanted. 68% of the subjects had died, and the remaining 32% wish they had been so lucky. He moves onto another batch and experiments with another way of achieving his desired results.

Tamika huddles into the corner of her cell, covering her ears as tortured screams ring out from all around her. Her palms are flat against her head but the screams don't get any quieter.

It takes her a while to realize it's because the screams are just as loud in her head.

She can't escape them at all.

* * *

Tamika is starved while another group is fed heartily with nutritious meals to see if the sceptre's approach towards human biology differs from its usual attack, possess, commit suicide based on diet.

Tamika is one of the few who survives the experiment. She is bedridden with night terrors so vivid that she wakes with blood on her neck from where she scratched at her invisible captor.

They feed her porridge with strawberries and peaches.

Because of their experiment, she can't keep it down. It's a small thing in the bigger picture of it, but as she struggles to choke down oats and fruit, it is the thing she cries the most for.

* * *

Intense grief is theorized to open the mind to greater, darker influences. Tamika watches as starved, haunted prisoners are escorted into a lab one-by-one, followed by a gun shot, followed by screams of grief, and then screams of anger. Sometimes they're carried out of the room, empty-eyed and unable to support their own weight.

If they're lucky, they don't come out at all, and die with the loved one Strucker executed in front of them.

77% die.

* * *

Electrotherapy is employed on the older members.

48.22% die.

The children are next.

89%.

* * *

Women are 73.8% more likely to survive exposure to the sceptre than men.

Over fifty people die. Tamika wonders where Strucker gets all these people—if _all_ of them are volunteers, or if they're ignorant children who trusted that their parents wouldn't ever hurt them.

She wonders if it matters anymore.

* * *

Mental disabilities are tested for their malleability.

10% die.

* * *

He cuts off a few limbs.

50%.

* * *

Physical illnesses. 25%.

* * *

Strucker thinks that the sceptre needs to be in direct contact with a mortal wound.

100%.

* * *

Physical fitness. No results.

Which basically means no one dies.

Tamika is escorted back to her cell and lives to see tomorrow. She cries when she wakes up, and doesn't notice until her pillowcase is already half-soaked.

She hopes Liam still plays rugby.

* * *

Resolution is tested. 100% of the adults die, as do all of the children.

The experiment is not without results. Results show that people between the ages of 16-25, particularly women but with a few odd men, are most likely to survive. Strucker theorizes that it is because their resolve is still strong. The older are tired and old; they're spineless after a bit of isolation. Once the children are disillusioned, they lose hope quickly.

But the young adults have lived a life often split down the middle with good and bad experiences. The battles they fight to win are still fresh in their minds. They are spry and realists, cautious in their hope but young enough to still aspire for dreams.

The sceptre likes the ones who struggle.

* * *

 _(…you have heart…)_

* * *

The first success is a blind twenty-two year old girl named Elle with one leg. She'd joined the program with both, but Strucker had seen to that early on.

The sceptre gives her the ability to change her hair color. It's worthless, and she's executed on a disappointed Strucker's orders. Her death isn't in vain for the scientists however. Elle is their first scientific success after all.

A young physically disabled woman survived.

The doctors change a variable and bring in a variety of young mentally disabled women.

All of them die sans one, and unlike Elle, the abilities granted to her by the sceptre aren't party tricks. She can manipulate energy in an ability similar to telekinesis, as evident by the explosion that happened in the lab when the sceptre took to her mind. She destroys the workshop in an instant, screaming all the way, before she's knocked out cold.

Out of courtesy, they test her twin, a boy with ADHD, and are overjoyed when he survives. He suffers a seizure on the table that turns out isn't a seizure and is just him moving around too fast for the human eye to catch smoothly. They tranq him and set him up in a cell beside his twin sisters' and move onto the rest of their subjects, optimistic about the results.

They're widely disappointed. Even with their subject pool narrowed down to the most compatible humans, all of them are rejected by the sceptre. Tamika hears them scream for days before she's picked up herself.

The walk to the lab is a familiar one. She doesn't make it easy either, forcing the guards to carry her by her arms as she refuses to walk, no matter how much they threatened to kick in her ribs. Escaping and resisting is futile, but she can't let them beat her mind into submission. They _won't_ take that from her.

She's strapped down onto a table that reeks of fear and blood. It's almost definitely inside her head because the room is cleaned thoroughly after every death. Or maybe she has superhuman smell and can sense that sorta thing. What does she know? After this hellish two years, anything could happen.

The scientists murmur between each other as they set up the equipment and carefully manoeuvre the sceptre, presented on a glass stand, in front of Tamika's table. They leave her to go into the observation room with the one-way mirror. There is a short silence before there's a hiss of air and the airtight case containing the sceptre slides away.

The sceptre's blue gas lights up like firing neurons. It sways in the still room as if a gust of wind has rippled through it before it goes still. Tamika watches it and flares her nostrils, swallowing nervously. Like a predator spotting its prey, the gas crawls towards her. It approaches tortuously slow. Tamika wonders what it will show her this time.

When it is not causing her unimaginable sensations that are purely psychosomatic but no less _painful_ for it, the sceptre shows her her worst nightmares.

Sometimes it makes her dream of an empty void that swallows her whole and dances under her skin, whispering and cackling and singing a dark song. She feels the sensation of that dream for days afterwards, and the rest of her nights until her next interaction with the sceptre are of the same sequence, over and over and over. It is so unsettling that she's eager to return to the sceptre and get a new nightmare.

Anything is better than that dream.

The gas engulfs her lower body and crawls up her chest, heavy like skeleton fingers dancing across her skin. The gas quickly flattens out across her body and covers her from head to toe. For a moment, it hovers gently on top of her skin, lingering like an intrusive thought that won't go away.

Tamika takes a deep breath. _Give it your best shot, you piece of shit,_ she thinks vindictively, staring straight ahead at the ceiling. _I'm strong. I won't let you bully me._

As always, she thinks of her father, and a flare of hate makes her blood reach boiling point.

At that moment, the gas abruptly groups together above her heart, twists around itself like a bad storm, and sinks into her.

Tamika screams with all that she is worth. The pain is intense and white hot, and it's a continuous type of torture that Strucker himself struggles to achieve. The sceptre's magic claws itself under her skin and breaks her ribs squeezing itself around her heart, and it's like she's been poisoned, like there is fire in her veins, and her body fights its restraints in a futile attempt to throw her enemy off of her. However, the magic is inside of her, and her nose bleeds as her body flickers between a pain it hasn't ever experienced before and complete numbness.

 _Fuck you_ , she thinks hazily as she howls her grief to the empty room. The sceptre is insulating itself into every individual cell and _godfuckfuckpleasestop_

 _it's_

 **a** _G_ o **N** _ **Y**_

 _too much too much too much_

get out of m e

 _sT_ _ **Op**_ _loOk_ _ **I**_ _Ng A_ _ **T M E**_

im tired are you listening anymore im tired let me go just let me die

death would be a relief let me die

aGoNY

 _f_ _ **U**_ _CK_ **YOU** i _**WILL**_ see my _b_ _ **RO**_ _t_ _ **H**_ _ers_ aGaiN **JUST TRY** _ **AND FUCKING STOP ME**_

 **A ND T HEN—**

…. nothing.

Tamika opens her eyes to see the world washed in a muted grey. She pulls at her restraints and meets no resistance. She feels disconnected from the world around her as she looks around the room. She's still in the lab, she can tell that much even if it looks like an old black and white picture. She dreams of that chair. She would recognise it anywhere.

The room is suddenly flooded with frantic scientists, bewildered and stunned as they search the chair she had just freed herself from. The leather straps that restrained her were still intact but looking down at her raw wrists, she _knows_ that she broke out of them somehow. If not by tearing them apart, then _how_ …?

And that's the exact moment Baron Von Strucker walks into the room and right _through_ her.

She gasps, eyes bulging as Strucker shivers and barks orders, demands answers from his team.

No one can see her. Everyone is looking straight through her, like she isn't even there.

It's like she's a…

Oh, god.

She's dead, isn't she? A ghost?

Tamika puts a hand over her mouth and sobs in joy.

"Thank you," She whispers to whoever had listened and freed her. " _Thank you, thank you_ , I'm finally dead, thank you—"

And then she is reintroduced to the devil's sense of humor, for the abnormal monochrome bleeds out the world and the scientists in the room gasp.

They're staring straight at her.

The normal washed out whites and the muted grey vision flicker in front of Tamika's eyes fast enough to give her a headache. She groans and strains her raw throat, raising a hand to her throbbing head. Her stomach flips and rolls.

Baron Von Strucker stands in front of her, a glint in his eyes as he reaches out to put his hand on her shoulder. It flickers in and out of tangibility right under his fingertips. He gasps softly in wonderment and whispers, "Amazing."

God, the reverence with which he says it could make her sick.

"You have invisibility," He notes as her body flickers between smoky, opaque and not-there-at-all. His hand nearly falls through the empty space her shoulder used to be before it quickly solidifies again. "And intangibility. Another success, another miracle, this is… the possibilities are endless. The opportunities in espionage alone are remarkable!"

"Herr Strucker? Is she stable?"

"She will be." Strucker replies confidently. "Prepare the cell beside the twins. Bring in the next subject. We, my friends," He inhaled deeply and exhaled in breathless satisfaction. The headache throbbing behind Tamika's eyes is clawing its way into migraine territory fast. "are going to create an army of miracles in no time."

Four guards flank her and reach to manhandle them between her. Their hands fail to find purchase.

Strucker tilts his head. "Will we have to make a collar for you, I think."

* * *

The next few months are from the eighth circle of hell itself.

It is 2015. It's been 4 years since she moved to Sokovia. She has either turned sixteen or is about to. After her, Strucker doesn't succeed in creating more enhanced individuals.

It is 2015, and she wears a collar like a dog to keep her powers from acting out without the permission of her owners.

Despite it all, Tamika refuses to work under Strucker. She won't kill anyone for him, and she spits in his face every damn time he asks.

"Go to hell." She gasps as soon as her head is out of the bucket. She struggles for air and she's so dizzy she feels like one foot is already in the grave, but _dammit_ , this is something she _will not_ budge on.

He has taken everything from her except _this_ —the freedom and right to think and _choose_ and continue to maintain vigilant with what few principals she has left. He can cut into her body and destroy her mind but _she won't give him her soul._

"Last chance." Strucker snaps impatiently. "Take this assignment."

People will die. She can't be apart of that and they can't make her; their collar grounds her to their dimension, but it can't activate her powers. That ability remains _hers_.

She plants herself like a tree, looks him in the eye and says. "No."

Strucker sighs, and her head is dunked again.

* * *

"Why are you here?" Asks Wanda Maximoff. "You aren't Sokovian. You are not here to fight for your country or get revenge. What do you fight for?"

Tamika fiddles with her nightgown. "Myself."

Wanda raises her eyebrows. She stands on the outside of Tamika's glass cell, voice coming through the intercom. She's likely here in an attempt to manipulate Tamika into being Strucker's puppet, but she hasn't made a move to do anything of the sort. For the past hour, she has been asking questions, trying to discover what motivates Tamika.

"You fight for yourself?" The idea seems to unsettle Wanda. Understandable. As a twin, the only time she'd been alone was that twelve minute time lapse it took for her to join her brother outside their shared womb. "Why?"

Tamika shrugs and smiles without humor, says tightly, "Well, no one else is going to do it."

* * *

"It is a certain worry of theirs," Wanda says once, "that you will slip your collar and escape the facility."

"Yeah?"

Wanda nods. "You're capable of it, I know you are. Your abilities make you uniquely suited for it, in fact. They're waiting for you to make an attempt. They believe it will happen any day now."

"Who is 'they'?" Tamika asks, staring blankly at the wall. Wanda's silence is unimpressed with the question. Both of them know who _they_ are. "The answer to your question isn't anything special. I'm not planning an epic escape or whatever. I'm not leaving."

"Why?" She frowns. "If you do not want to be here, why won't you run?"

"Got nowhere to run to." Tamika confesses, before pausing and adding. "The people I left behind are better off without me. It's that simple."

"You're young, yes?" Tamika nods. "You are too young for your eyes to look so old, I think. You are a husk. You need purpose." Wanda steps forward and places her hand gently on the glass of the cell. "We can give you something to _fight for_ , Tamika. Something bigger than yourself. If you _let us_ …"

"No thank you." Tamika tilts her head back to stare at the cracks in the ceiling. She taps her fingers on her thighs in a random beat. "I don't want to work for bullies. My mum raised me better than that."

Wanda huffs and dismisses Tamika with a shake of her head. "You're too stubborn." She lectures Tamika heatedly. "You are not seeing the truth as it is. Hydra, Sokovia, Strucker, we are _not_ the enemy. We are the _victims_ of the Americans, fighting for our right to live. There is _meaning_ to it; more than there is sitting in an empty cell in a dirty nightgown, reading the same book for the rest of eternity!"

When Tamika sullenly keeps her silence, Wanda purses her lips and tries again. "You should take action—" she stresses before Tamika opens her mouth and cuts her off.

"I don't want to fight any wars. I'm fine reading the same Vaclav Havel book until I die." She smiles tightly in Wanda's direction. Wanda does not look impressed. "It's a pretty good book."

"Strucker will leave you to rot, Maihi. He would rather have you die slowly and painfully than risk you falling into enemy hands."

"… Uh, how did that one phrase go again? Umm… ' _The enemy of my enemy is my friend_ '? Whatever it is, that's what I'm banking on." Tamika wrinkles her nose and brings her knees up to her chest. She rests her chin on her knees and stares at the wall again. Her desire to continue talking is disappearing. She wants to go back to sleep. "…'m not fighting for Strucker, Wanda. You can't make me."

"I _could_." Wanda disagrees. Tamika goes tense in preparation for a mind-whammy. She doesn't know how she'd hold up against an attack like that. Wanda hasn't ever made an enemy of Tamika before, and her powers are so unpredictable that Tamika might not get out of trouble by phasing through it.

"I could make you, but I will not. I _need_ not. You will come to see reason on your own, and be a more reliable ally for it. I'm sure of it."

Tamika sighs and purses her lips. "Don't hold your breath."

* * *

"You just don't know when to give up, do you, Miss Maihi? God's righteous woman?"

"I j…just don't l-like… bu…bullies…"

"Cute. Reach capacity voltage. I don't want to hear anything like that from her again."

 _Your name is Tamika Maihi. You are in a Hydra base located in Sokovia. It is the year 2015. You are sixteen years old. You will not kill anyone._

 _Your name is Tamika Maihi. You are in a Hydra base located in Sokovia. It is the year 2015. You are sixteen years old. You will not kill anyone._

 _Your name is Tamika Maihi. You are in a Hydra base located in Sokovia. It is the year 2015. You are sixteen years old. You will not kill anyone._

"Why do you resist? What drives you to deny me?"

"Don't touch me!"

 _Your name is Tamika Maihi…_

* * *

"You must get very lonely…" Wanda mutters as she watches Tamika scratch another knots-and-crosses game into the wall. Her wall is full of tiny games just the same. "I cannot imagine how you are staying sane."

"I'm not." Tamika answers shortly, drawing a circle. She connects three. At least sixty other games have been won the same way. There are only so many ways to win. "Are you going to try and recruit me again?"

"… No." Wanda sends a surreptitious glance over her shoulder. "I want to get to know you."

"It's been months and suddenly you're interested?"

"Pietro asked me yesterday if your birthday has passed or if you are still waiting to celebrate. It occurred to me that I don't know when your birthday is. Truthfully, I do not know much about you at all. I intend to fix that."

"That's nice of you," Tamika remarks as she draws another game into the wall. "My birthday is on the thirty-first of May."

"Then you are still fifteen years old." Says Wanda, looking unsettled as she speaks it aloud. _I know,_ Tamika wants to say, _it is a rather young age, isn't it?_ "It is only April."

"April?" That was the month of her mother's birthday. "Past the twenty-second?"

"No, it's only the seventh. Why do you ask? Is that date special to you?"

"Not really. Not in here, at least." Tamika glances at Wanda and sees the young adult watching her curiously. Her eyes look softer than usual. She really _is_ here to learn about Tamika, it isn't an elaborate recruitment tactic at all. How… unusual. What changed? "When is your birthday?"

"Pietro and I were born on the tenth of May." She smiles surprisingly warmly. "Same month as you."

"Who's older?"

"With me and Pietro?" Wanda tilts her head.

"Mmm." Tamika nods.

Wanda frowns. "Does it matter? We're twins."

Maybe so. "Will you tell me about Pietro?"

"I thought we were going to talk about you today."

"Talking about anything is great, but my life was boring. You and Pietro are different, I think."

Wanda's eyes go sad again and she nods. She's wearing that same outfit that she always does; the skirt, the thigh high socks, the red cotton shirt and black cardigan. Tamika wonders if she simply likes the style, or if those are the only clothes she has.

"Pietro is my best friend." Wanda tells her, eyes glazing over in thought. Tamika settles in to listen. "Me and him, we share a soul. Even before Strucker's experiment amplified it, I could always feel his presence in the back of my mind. It buzzes. When he is sad, I am sad. When he is angry, I am angry. We know each other intrinsically. Me and my brother are two halves of the same whole. This has always been the case. It used to… to drive my mother insane because we would…"

* * *

Tamika thinks that she would like Pietro if she were to ever meet him.

* * *

"What about your family?"

"I think they forgot about me. I've been here for four years. I'm glad they don't know me now."

* * *

"Pietro would like to meet you. He says that you would make a nicer little sister than me, the blockhead." Chuckle, rolled eyes, she isn't upset at him at all.

"Yeah? Tell him that he sounds like a good older brother. I wouldn't mind having him… and you." Surreptitious glance. Nervous. Why did you say that, idiot?

Surprise. Flushed cheeks, bashful smile. "As an older sister?" _Am I projecting the hope on her face?_

Shrug. "Never had one before. 'D be cool." Look away, look away, don't let her see how much it'd mean to you.

Look anyway.

She is at her prettiest when she smiles with her teeth. "I'd love to have you." Is she kidding?

Oh.

 _Oh._

Stop crying, she doesn't want to see that.

* * *

 _Your name is Tamika Maihi. You are in a Hydra base located in Sokovia. It is the year 2015. You are sixteen years old. You will not kill anyone._

 _Your name is Tamika Maihi. You are in a Hydra base located in Sokovia. It is the year 2015. You are sixteen years old. You will not kill anyone._

 _Your name is—_

"I'd rather die!"

"Careful, girl. You may tempt me too much for me to control myself next time. You, over there, pass me that—yes, _that_. It's been a while since I've used a whip. It's a bit of a medieval punishment, no originality to it at all, but you've worn me down."

— _Tamika Maihi. You are in a Hydra base located in Sokovia. It is the year 2015. You are sixteen years old._

"Last chance…"

 _You will not_

"… work for me."

 _ **not**_

"No."

"Very well. You, tie her up on that pole. I need to see her back for this."

 _k…kill… kill anyone. You will not kill anyone._

 _Your name is Tamika Maihi and you will never stop fighting him._

 _Truth is, you will die first._

 _._

* * *

Crackle of intercom. Wanda is here? She is late. Glance over. Apologetic face. Blink, surprise, betrayal, fury. Schools it quickly but you caught it. Tight smile. "Pietro told me what happened. Ten lashes?"

How long will it take to heal? Your body regenerates faster than average but still…

"… mmm…"

"I—I'm sorry, that should have never…" Swallows something down, clears her throat, flattens her hands down her skirt. Her face is red with... anger? "How do you feel?"

You are tired.

"Like I just got whipped."

You want to sleep through the entire day. Let time pass without you. That would be kind.

"How about… mentally?"

"I'm tired, Wanda." Will she understand how deep of a statement it is? "I want to sleep."

"Yes, of course. Well," Swallows. "I'll let you rest. I will come and check on you when I can."

Ah, she didn't get it. You want to feel upset about it. You don't have the energy. Say hello to Pietro for me, you think. You don't say it aloud.

She leaves and you sleep sleep sleep.

(You keep on waking up.)

* * *

You miss your birthday. You don't realise until Wanda apologizes for not giving you a gift.

"Oh. It's okay."

"The doctors would not allow me to visit you. They still believe that I am trying to recruit you and they did not believe I was doing a good job, so they wanted to stop the visits. I convinced them to let me stay."

"Good…"

Furrowed eyebrows. "Are you okay, Tamika? Your back has healed, hasn't it?"

Your back…? Oh. Yeah. "It has."

Confusion. "Then what is the matter?"

What is the matter?

"Are they not feeding you properly?"

Sigh. Don't look at her, she might see something she isn't ready to know. She looks healthy. They take care of their compliant asset.

Good.

"Just tired."

"But… you're always tired."

"… I know…"

Too bad, huh?

* * *

" _лапочка_!" You jerk. Open your eyes. Is that Wanda already? "Tamika, wake up, hurry!"

Roll out of bed, catch yourself low on the floor. Look at the glass. Who is the one with the silver hair?

"The base is under siege, this is your chance to leave!"

Leave? "But you don't want to leave. What will you do?"

"I will fight." Sternly. "But you can leave. With us."

You will have to follow this line of thought afterwards. Now, there isn't time.

How will you get out?

Touch the collar. Silver hair raises his eyebrows cheekily. "Got that covered, little sestra." Clear throat. Says clearly, " _отбрасывать_." _Russian?_

 _Click._

 _ **OH GOD**_

The world goes grey. Inhale freedom. Captivity no longer compresses your skeleton.

Walk through the cell, you are a ghost, wash the grey away, color between the lines. Wanda's red shirt is brighter on the other side of the cell.

The silver haired boy is tall. You are two centimeters taller.

He scowls. It looks like Wanda's.

He has her chin.

They are so _warm_.

"Pietro?" It must be. He nods. "You are shorter than I was expecting."

"And you are taller than Wanda told me." Raised eyebrow. Small smile. He isn't upset. "Nice to finally meet you."

"Is it?"

"Wanda never shuts up about you, so yeah, I'd say so." Claps his hand on your shoulder. Jump, flinch back, his eyes go wide, then narrow, then dark. "I knew they were not kind to you. This is why we refuse to stand with them."

Them?

"Later, Pietro." Wanda. Telegraphs movement: let her take your hand. "Distract the invaders. I'll clear an escape path for us. Don't come back until you're sure we won't be tailed, not before."

"Bossy little sister." Rolled eyes. Their hands touch each other's arm. "Tamika is already my favorite."

 _You_? "Thank you."

Blink and he is gone. Blue gas remains where he used to be, energy that is quickly dispelling. He is fast.

"Yes, he is." Agrees Wanda. Hand tightens around yours. Look down at her. For someone so big, she is so small. "Let's go."

The stone is the same in every hallway. Recognize them, even though they are unfamiliar. Wanda knows which turn leads where. Under, over, up and down, around and around and now we are in a cellar. There are no wine bottles in here, but the floors are still washed red.

A door is on the other side. Wanda pulls you over, tells you to wait, opens the door.

Pauses.

There is conversation. She is tense. Climbs the stairs like a cat. Red energy gaseous like Pietro's cling to her hands before she throws it. It knocks into someone and floors them like it is something tangible. She walks back and slams the door behind her. Frantic, whips around, eyes wide.

"We need to go, this route is compromised. Oh, _god_ , I think that was Captain America." Wrinkles her nose, eyes bright but disappointed. "We read about him. He is supposed to be a good man. Good men do not work with _Stark_."

Spit the name. _Stark_ is not a good man?

Who is _Stark_?

"We have to run before he comes looking, quick Tamika—"

Hand in yours. Pulled to the right, why are you running? The doors open and a big blond man enters.

Step into the grey world and be greeted gladly.

Wanda gasps. You look at her and she is not monotone at all, she is red and black and pale-skinned, brown hair. Your hands are touching. She is a ghost like you.

Captain looks in your direction and stares straight through the both of you. Bring your finger to your lips, _keep quiet please_ , and pull her to the stairs. Climb them, walk through the closed door, continue walking until you are outside.

Coast is clear.

The grey drips.

Wanda gasps like she hasn't taken a breath of air since you went under. "That was your power?" She asks breathlessly. "You… you see the world so differently, I didn't think it was like that!"

"The fabric of reality has small, thin gaps. Invisibility is achievable by half-stepping into those gaps and allowing light to pass through me. Phasing happens when I fully occupy the space in between."

"Strucker said that you didn't understand how your powers worked the way they did. That they were not entirely scientific in nature."

Shrug. Snow is cold. Your feet are bare and you wear a dirty nightgown.

"Lead the way. I will follow, I promise."

"Oh, of course." Apologetic smile. "Do you feel the temperature when you are invisible?"

Shake your head.

"Then stick close to me."

Close your eyes.

Open your arms.

Embrace it.

 _Greygreygrey._

* * *

The house that they take refuge in is a one-room apartment, small and barely inhabitable. There is a king sized mattress on the floor with a single quilt thrown over it, a small rusted kitchen and a dinner table big enough for four. The fridge does not have a handle. The water pressure is like honey. The warm water lasts ten minutes.

It is the best thing Tamika has ever seen.

Wanda gives her clothes to wear. Black socks much the same as hers, a dress with mesh sleeves, and Pietro's flannel-lined coat. It is blue, plaid, and reminds Tamika keenly of the coat Liam gave her four years ago.

She is still cold but it is manageable, after those winter nights in the cell. Wanda is sitting at the table with a bowl of broth from the pot on the gas stove, blowing and sipping the meal. Her leg is jumping anxiously under the table. She keeps shooting glances at the door.

Tamika wonders how to ask, if she even should. She remembers where her old house is but there's no telling if it's a safe space, if her father still lives there or if he's moved by now. It could be a bust.

Wanda glances at her face, catches on some expression she must find, and smiles. "I wasn't expecting you to be so tall. You are only sixteen. I was a lot smaller than you at that age."

"You aren't from New Zealand. I am māori on my mother's side. We aren't always tall, but my father is German, and everyone in my family is tall because of it. Sokovians are very tiny in comparison."

Wanda makes an awed sound. "Or you are very big." She says before shaking her head in exasperation. "My little sister is twenty centimetres taller than me. It isn't right."

"Little sister?"

Wanda blinks, suddenly nervous. "Yes…? I — _well_ , we agreed that we could… that I could be your older sister, remember? And Pietro could be… unless you not serious?" She seems vulnerable as she asks, uncertain of where to step.

Tamika's eyes widen. Her voice is shaky. "I thought you were humoring me. You consider me family?"

"Yes." Says Wanda instantly. "Do not doubt it."

Tamika doesn't know to do anything else.

Pietro enters at that moment. "Stark was there." He says shortly, face thunderous. An age old wound is gaping, open and vulnerable. Tamika worries, slightly. "Stark was there and _he_ —"

"I know, Pietro." Wanda says, voice soft but not soothing. The conversation between her and Tamika is supposedly finished. "I saw him before we left."

"You and Tamika ran into him? Are you okay?"

Wanda raises her eyebrows and looks pointedly at Tamika. Pietro does a double take at her outfit, tilting his head. "He did not see us." Wanda says like it's obvious. It kind of _is_. "But I did not leave him unscathed."

Ah, yes. Wanda had hit 'Stark' with a big dose of mind-fuck before they'd truly left the facility. Tamika had watched in silence as a great big wolfy grin ate up the kindness on Wanda's face when Stark picked up the sceptre.

("You're going to let him take it?" Tamika knows the chaos the sceptre will wrought. She is not comfortable with any human harnessing its power; humans are fallible. The sceptre is not.

"Shh," Wanda whispers, excited in an uncomfortable way. "Trust me.")

"Tell me." Demands Pietro, sitting across Wanda on the table. He drags her bowl to him and takes three big gulps of the broth. Wanda watches him in thinly veiled irritation. "What did you do?"

"Stark will destroy himself with the sceptre." Wanda shares, satisfied. "His biggest fear is war. He will ruin the lives of everyone he loves trying to create a shortcut to world peace. I saw it. He believes the sceptre is the way to do it."

Pietro rolls his eyes, scoffing. "Arrogant fool."

"We would hardly need to do a thing. His empire will crumble from within."

"He created that empire on the foundation of the innocents he murdered. It's blood money. That empire should have never rose in the first place!"

Oh, _boy_. Tamika shrinks backwards, not entirely sure she is welcome anymore. This seems personal. Whatever Stark did, he is the reason the twins volunteered for the program.

"Peace, Pietro." Wanda whispers, quickly switching into her native tongue. Ukrainian, perhaps? She talks Pietro down from his rage efficiently, looking just as upset as Pietro. She channels it a different way. Where Pietro is explosive and physical in his grief, she appears to mould it into a desperate need for revenge, slow and poisonous.

Tamika gulps.

Hydra was proud of Wanda and Pietro. They were glad to be of service and trained in controlling their powers for two years. They were active agents for the agency, sent out on missions to secure strongholds or eliminate traitors. No matter how closely monitored or controlled the conditions were, the twins _has_ been fighting. Hydra had given them everything they asked for.

So if they'd betrayed Hydra, that meant a better opportunity had been presented to them. That meant they were now able to achieve their true desire. Not fighting for Sokovia, but getting revenge against this Stark character. Which meant fighting. Which meant blood. Which meant death.

Tamika closes her eyes and breathes in deep. The twins are still talking to each other in Ukrainian. She interjects. "I will not fight."

The world stops.

Pietro turns to her. "What do you mean, you will not fight? Who has asked you to?"

No one, but that doesn't mean they won't. It doesn't mean they'll be satisfied with her pacifism. She's clearing the air, isn't she? Wanda's eyes widen. She and Pietro share furtive glances before she slowly stands up. She takes a step forward. Tamika flinches. She stops.

Tamika says, "If you two want revenge, if you two want to go to war, then that is your choice. I will respect it. But I will not fight with you. I won't go to war."

Wanda takes a moment to gather her thoughts. "I — yes, we had considered asking for your assistance with this, but we would not have forced you. Why would you think —"

Pietro finishes her sentence, eyes closed as if in pain. "Tamika…" He begins, meeting her gaze. "We are not Hydra. We won't force you to fight for a personal cause that you don't believe in."

Tamika is hesitant to trust him.

"This fight is personal for me and Pietro and we would be honored if you chose to take it as your own," Wanda takes a few steps forward. She smiles when Tamika doesn't move away. "But if you chose to sit it out, we will protect you from it."

They descend into silence as Tamika processes this. Wanda looks anxious. Pietro looks a bit pissed off, but not at Tamika. More like Hydra for giving her the instinct to assume anyone who helps her up from the ground wants to knock her back down again.

Tamika hesitantly decides something. "I… sorry, then. I didn't mean to make you seem like the villain, but I… I don't _want_ to fight anymore, I'm tired, and when I thought you would ask that of me… I got scared." She finishes lamely, wondering if they would resent her for turning invisible and hiding out of embarrassment.

"Hydra wasn't kind to you. Don't apologize for what they did. Instead, hold them accountable." Pietro stands and walks over at normal person speed. He puts his big hand on Tamika's shoulder and looks her in the eye. "We will be better for you in every way we can be."

Right.

Her disbelief must show on her face because it gives Wanda the confidence to step up beside her brother. She grabs Tamika's hands in hers. "If you cannot trust us, then trust that me and my brother will do everything in our power to keep what remains of our family safe. Trust _that_."

* * *

 _"What's the word on Strucker?"_

 _"NATO's got him."_

 _"The two enhanced?"_

 _"Wanda and Pietro Maximoff. Twins. Orphaned at ten when a shell collapsed their apartment building. Sokovia's had a rough history. It's nowhere special but it's on the way to everywhere special."_

 _"Abilities?"_

 _"He's got increased metabolism and improved thermal homeostasis. Her thing is neural electric interfacing, telekinesis, mental manipulation. … He's fast and she's weird."_

 _"They'll show up again."_

 _"Agreed. Now, Strucker's file says that there was a third success; a sixteen year old girl by the name of Tamika Maihi. I know, she's young, but her father was Mateo Ackerman."_

 _"Am I supposed to know who that is?"_

 _"Unlikely. He was a high-ranking member of Hydra though, promoted to level 6 clearance in 2011, moved to Sokovia and brought his daughter with him. Ackerman volunteered her for the program and was executed so he wouldn't be able to speak about it. She was thirteen when the testing started."_

 _"And her abilities?"_

 _"She has improved regeneration, can manipulate light to pass through her and render herself unseen and can quantum tunnel through solid matter. Basically, she can turn invisible and run through walls. … Cap, what's up?"_

 _"I can't help wondering why we didn't run into her."_

 _"That's easy. Files say that she refuses to work under Strucker and they've been trying to convince her to change her mind for a year and a half. She won't budge. Guess the reason you didn't encounter her is because she took the chance to escape. We don't know where she is but we're working on it."_

 _"She's sixteen?"_

 _"Yeah. It's nuts. But unlike the twins, she didn't volunteer for the program. Doesn't like fighting Hydra's good fight. She's quoted saying that she 'doesn't like bullies'. Figured you'd like that. But the twins? They asked for it. Can't imagine why."_

 _"Right. Because what kind of monster lets a German scientist experiment on them to protect their country?"_

 _"We're not at war, Cap."_

 _"They are."_

* * *

"If I may ask," Pietro says from above her. He is braiding Tamika's thick curly hair. "Why are you so afraid of fighting?"

"I'm not scared of it." Tamika mumbles, wrinkling her nose. Pietro gives off a palpable aura of disbelief. "Seriously, I'm not. I guess I'm just… sick of pain. That seems like all there is to fighting. I don't want it. I'm better off without it."

"Ah." Hums Pietro, a smile in his voice. "You are a pacifist. So was my father. Perhaps you are related to me after all."

Tamika snorts, thinking of her brown skin and his milky white skin. "I don't think so." New Zealand and Sokovia are nowhere close to each other. But speaking of relatives. "Pietro?"

"Yeah?"

"I was wondering…"

* * *

The next day, she wears Liam's big green flannel shirt. Her black boots have fur lined on the insides, and Pietro gives her gloves and a scarf to keep her warm.

"You're seriously going out because someone sent you a cryptic message telling you to? Isn't that obviously a trap?" She grumbles as Pietro forced a cup of watery, but hot, tea into her hands. Wanda is giving her sympathetic looks as she is subjected to Pietro's doting. "Where are we even going—Pietro, _no_."

Pietro gets his earmuffs shoved into his chest. "You need to be warm otherwise you'll catch a cold. We don't have the resources to look after you if you get sick."

"I won't get sick! I can handle the weather."

"You were not raised here, you—"

" _Wanda_ gets to go out in just a cardigan!"

"Please do not bring me into this." Wanda backs off, a small smile on her face. She looks like she knows something no one else does. Viable, given that she can read auras and skim primary thoughts from a person's mind.

"I don't need a hat!"

"Better to be safe than sorry, right? Take the damn hat, Tamika."

"No."

"Why not?!"

"It's ugly."

"It's _ugly_ —fine! Get sick! See if I care!" Pietro scoffs and throws the earmuffs across the room. Tamika somehow does not feel like she's won. Pietro smoothly picks her up and says to Wanda. "Be right back."

Being transported by Pietro, Tamika notes, is not a fun experience. Her eyes hurt from he fast moving world around them and she feels like her stomach has migrated to her throat. Pietro sits her down, laughs at her, and disappears to bring his sister. It doesn't take long at all.

Wanda giggles softly at the sight of Tamika hunched over and trying to keep her lunch inside of her. "You get used to it." She says dryly, glancing at the doors of the church. "Wait outside. If we need you, we'll call you."

Tamika frowns. "I'm not going in?"

"Whoever is in there could be interested in picking a fight." Explains Pietro. "Until we can be sure we won't be in trouble, you stay out here."

Well.

"Okay." Tamika settles against the outside wall. No fighting? Sounds good to her. "Be careful."

The twins smile quickly as if she has said something funny before they slowly enter the church, cautious and prepared for an ambush. The big doors close behind them, and Tamika settles in to wait for the sound of her name.

She covers her cold ears with her hands and sighs.

* * *

Tamika doesn't like Ultron. Which is well and good, because he doesn't much appreciate her either. When the twins told him that she wouldn't be fighting, he'd thought they were joking and had laughed. When he realized they were being serious, he'd exploded in short-lived rage.

("You humans are so WASTEFUL. You're given the ability to FIGHT for a change and WHAT DO YOU DO? YOU DO NOTHING. Ah, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to yell. My temper gets away from me sometimes. It's just so FRUSTRATING.")

He'd tried to get rid of her since she was useless to him but Wanda had put a stop to that. Now he just ignored her. Tamika was happy for it. Ultron unsettled her.

Pietro finishes brushing and tying Wanda's hair into a high ponytail. Tamika asks, "We're really going to Wakanda?"

"Do you want to stay and look after the house?" He returns, grabbing a new pair of sneakers for himself and swapping them with the worn shoes he wore now.

"Not really."

"Then yeah," Pietro nods. "We're going to Wakanda."

"That's in Africa? Isn't it really hot there?"

"I'm sure we'll hardly notice it." Wanda was putting on eyeliner. Tamika does not know why, but it suits her, so she doesn't ask. "Besides, you have an effective way of remaining unaffected by the temperature. It shouldn't bother you too much."

Point. Tamika screws her lips to the side and sighs. "But why Wakanda? What's there?"

"Metal." Pietro shrugs, throwing a pair of denim short shorts at her. "Dress appropriately. It'll be hot there." He tells her absently. Tamika suspects he's been ignoring her complaints since the moment she started.

Tamika rolls her eyes emphatically but takes the shorts and white tank top. "I'm keeping the socks on." She tells Pietro, standing up.

He cringes, but Wanda looks smug. "They look good, no? Pietro thinks they are trashy."

"They _are_ trashy."

"They're only socks, Pietro."

"How is it that both of my little sisters are pains in the ass? It seems unfair."

Tamika snorts, and Wanda grins. "It must be you." Says the younger twin. "You inspire the worst in people."

Tamika leaves to change into her new outfit and feels the chill of the weather instantly. As the twins argue, Tamika steps back and lets the monochrome world embrace her. There is no temperature when she is in this form, and hardly any emotions.

She loses things that remind her that she's human. Touch and smell disappear completely, while sight is muted greys and the twins sound like they're speaking underwater. Her emotions quieten. She can phase through objects and ignore the laws of physics. Therefore, she is more human and also less.

A ghost.

"Tamika? _лапочка_ , where have you—" Wanda calls. "I cannot talk to you if I cannot see you!"

Tamika sees the blue of Pietro's eyes. "Sorry. Hi." Her senses are assaulted immediately. "Anyway, Wakanda?"

* * *

Wakanda is hot.

But, as fate would have it, Tamika deals with it the best.

Wanda sculls back the rest of her water and licks her lips tiredly as Ultron makes a deal with Klaue. Pietro surreptitiously swipes a hand across his forehead, wrinkling his nose at the sweat he collects. Tamika stands between them, smiling to herself as she barely glistens.

Likely feeling the smugness of her emotions, Wanda sends her a warning look. Tamika is the picture of innocence. Pietro checks to make sure the "adults" are preoccupied with their serious business deal before he sniffs, wipes his forehead with the hem of his shirt, and throws his arm around Tamika's shoulder.

The smell is so pungent that in order to escape it, she retreats into her grey world.

Pietro's arm falls through empty air, his eyes wide in surprise at her quick actions. His arm is technically going through her torso. It doesn't feel awkward so much as it looks awkward, so she walks to stand on Wanda's empty side.

Wanda glances in her direction immediately. "I can _sense_ you," She says under her breath, looking quite thrilled with this. "You are beside me? Here?" And then she reaches out and touches Tamika's cheek.

Tamika solidifies under her hand instead of answering.

Wanda looks _thrilled_.

"That is not fair." Says Pietro, face scrunched up. "That's _cheating_."

"All is fair in love and war." Quips Wanda, "If I can sense you then I won't lose you. This is convenient, yes? I like it."

"And now she will be even more bossy." Pietro sounds long-suffering. "How will we survive—"

From the "I-only-deal-with-the-boss" corner, someone yells. The trio come to attention immediately as Klaue's arm falls to the floor. His wound is cauterized from Ultron's white hot blade but it does nothing to soothe the pain.

Uh oh.

"I'm sorry. I am sor… Ooh, I'm sure that's going to be okay. I'm sorry, it's just I don't understand." Ultron's robotic face twists in fury. Tamika shrinks back. " _Don't_ compare me with _Stark_!" And then he kicks the white man down the stairs. Wanda's eyes widen. Ultron continues yelling, "It's a thing with me. Stark is, he's a _sickness_!"

And then—a strange sound, like a mini jet. Wanda's face turns into something stony and unforgiving, and by some unspoken signal, Pietro's body language turns hostile. Just as Tamika's about to as what's wrong, a red robot that anyone would recognize landed on the bridge.

 _Oh boy._

"Ahh, Junior." Hammer man and Captain are behind him. "You're gonna break your old man's heart."

 _He sounds just like Ultron_ , is Tamika's first thought.

"If I have to." Says Ultron, coming down from his rage so quickly that it is anything but comforting. _Sociopath_.

The hammer man steps forward. "We don't have to break anything."

"Clearly," Ultron says without missing a beat. "You've never made an omelet."

"He beat me by one second." Iron Man quips, and his easy-going nature must burst something within the tightly-wound Pietro, because then Pietro is stepping out from his cover.

"Ah, this is funny, Mr. Stark." Calls Pietro in a tone that implies this is anything but. He gestures to the nukes sleeping around them, a sardonic look on his face. "It's what, comfortable? Like old times?"

"That was never my life." Replies _Stark_. The dude Pietro and Wanda want dead so damn bad is _Tony Stark_.

Tamika swallows nervously.

She looks around for a place to hide when she feels eyes on her. Captain looks at her beseechingly. "You're young, you don't have to do this. I read your file. I know that this is the _last_ thing you want to do." Tamika takes a shuddering breath. Pietro steps half in front of her protectively. To the twins, the Captain says, "You two can still walk away from this."

Wanda pouts sarcastically. "Oh, we will." She assures them..

"I know you've suffered—"

Ultron cuts the Captain off, impatient. "Uuughh!" He snarls. " _Captain America_! God's righteous man, pretending you could live without a war." His condescending tone is dialed down slightly. "I can't physically throw up in my mouth, _but_ …"

Hammer man swings his hammer in caution. He looks at Ultron with the eyes of a man secure in his morals. It is the look of a man who will gladly fight for what he believes in. Tamika steps back. "If you believe in peace, then let us keep it."

"I think you're confusing _peace_ with _quiet_."

"Yuh-huh. What's the vibranium for?"

"I'm glad you asked that, because I wanted to take this time to explain my evil plan." Suddenly, the Iron Legions attack Stark, Captain and Hammer man. Ultron jumps in the fight, colliding with Stark mid-air, while Pietro blurs into action and Wanda throws Captain back.

Tamika fades into obscurity.

* * *

"I've done the whole mind control thing. Not a fan." Pietro speeds in, knocks down Arrow Guy, picks up Wanda and speeds off. "Yeah, you better run!" Tamika watches him get up curiously. "Whoever's standing, we gotta move! Guys?"

Tamika makes a curious sound, and Arrow Guy looks in her direction immediately. "Where are you even _hiding_?" He asks.

He knows she's there?

Tamika sees the purple of his uniform. He has an arrow armed and pointed at her with a speed she could only credit Pietro with. He squints at her, and Tamika tries not to stare too intently at the unrecognizable arrowhead. "You a friendly, kid? How old are you?"

"S-sixteen…"

"Young." He nods. "Wait, are you the Maihi girl? Asshole Hydra dad, moved from New Zealand four years ago and took residence in the Hydra shit party?"

"My name is _Tamika_."

"Yeah, I know. Cap told the team about you, said we could possibly recruit you to our side." He did? Her surprise must have been really obvious or he was good at reading people, because he responded. "I know, sounds nuts, doesn't it? But Cap's the leader, and whatever he thinks he sees in you, he thinks it'll be useful on this team, and I'm not one to doubt him. Interested?"

Tamika makes a pained noise. "I can't…"

"Don't tell me you _like_ working under Ultron?"

"He does not like me much, no, but…" Tamika shakes her head emphatically. "I cannot leave Wanda and Pietro."

Arrow Guy seems to understand what she's saying. "They're your family?" He asks, and she nods. "I understand loyalty to family, kid, but you have to consider yourself and what's best for you."

Tamika shrugs.

"Look, that guy you're working under, he's not going to be satisfied with keeping the peace. He'll get too big for his breeches. Ultron won't be able to keep his nose out of wars, because Tony couldn't, and they're really similar. And you're a pacifist, aren't you?"

Tamika nods.

"Your abilities have too many applications in warfare for him to be comfortable leaving you on the sidelines." As if she didn't know that. "But we're the good guys, you know? Or—we try to be and most of the time we do a good job of it. If you want to find your mom again, settle down and be normal, we'll set it up. If you want to get a desk job, we'll find you a tutor to catch you up on your math. Whatever you want to do, Cap and I—we'll figure it out."

That easy, is it?

It's so insane that Tamika can only cover her face with her hands and _cry_.

* * *

"What can I do?"

"Ah," Wanda whimpers, holding her head in pain. Pietro watches her struggle to wrestle down the pain with growing rage. "It hurts!"

Pietro seems to come to a sudden decision, eyes dark as he stands and turns back to the factor. "I'm going to kill him," He snarls. "I'll be right back."

"No." Wanda snaps, hand darting to catch his. She tightens her grip until it is vice-like until the pain is something she can shove aside. "I'm over it. I want…" She inhales a breath. Holds it. Looks towards the Quinjet. "I want to finish the plan."

A mild-mannered scientist cautiously exits the plane, fiddling with the sleeves of his jumper. Wanda is reminded starkly of Tamika, who plays with the hem of her shirt when she thinks no one is looking.

"I want the big one." She breathes. "You check on Tamika. I don't like the idea of her alone in there with them."

Pietro nods in agreement. "I'll be right back."

* * *

Pietro enters the factory to the scene of a baton going through Tamika's body. He speeds over and clocks the archer across the chin, appearing at Tamika's side before his opponent even hits the floor. He grabs her bicep. "Are you alright?"

"Yes." She answers, though her eyes are red and there are tear tracts not yet dried on her cheeks. She sniffles and wipes at her face. "Are we… can we go now, Pietro?"

"Yes." Says Pietro, smiling smugly. "The plan is—"

Her eyes widen at the sight of something over his shoulder and she grabs him by his arms, drags him forwards as she trips backwards. There's a sharp whistle of air as a baton narrowly misses his head. Pietro is begrudgingly impressed by the archer's recovery time and turns around to punch him in the nose.

It breaks easily under his fist. The man moves in slow motion compared to him, so he gets in three punches to the torso. The archer is efficient. Normally, Pietro would respect that in a person, but seeing as it has only caused trouble for his sisters, it's nothing more than an annoyance.

Before he can vent his frustrations on the agent, chains sail through his body, followed shortly by Tamika herself. Pietro steps back in surprise. What does she intend to do with them, he wonders?

The ends of the chain are held in Tamika's fists, and while herself and her chains phased completely through Pietro's body, the same cannot be said for the winded agent. The chains solidify around his body and behind him, Tamika twists and goes around him again, turning herself and select areas of her chains intangible when and where it suits her. She weaves in and around the archer like an intricate braid, and phases the ends of the chain together with a flourish.

The archer, who has recovered from Pietro's combo, looks down at the quick work at restraints with something like begrudging impress. He shifts his nose and blows blood out of it. "Nice work kid." He says to Tamika. "Could have made it tighter. I'll get out of it soon."

"I know." The tall, dark skinned girl shrugs and smiles at Pietro like she isn't sure she's allowed to. "But he's pretty fast."

Taking that as his queue, Pietro sweeps her into his arms and runs to the last place he saw Wanda. She is waiting for him with Ultron by the Quinjet, eyes anxiously scanning over him and Tamika for injuries as soon as he stops before them. In the distance, he hears an angry roar. The mission was completed then.

"Alright?" Wanda presses.

"Yeah. You?"

"Fine." She looks at Tamika, who Pietro puts on the ground. "What happened?"

"They tried to recruit me." Tamika confesses without hesitation. Pietro pauses, lets the implication sinks in, and is suddenly so angry he could go back and murder them all. "And then I said no, so he told me he'd get his ass reamed if he didn't at least try to bring me in, so I tied him up in chains. Sorry. I didn't have a choice."

Wanda opens her mouth. Closes it. Tilts her head. "I don't think you should be apologizing for that."

Ultron intercepts, robotic head on Tamika in interest. "Strucker said you weren't trained. You took him down?" Uncomfortable, she nods. "Incredible. And you want to waste you natural talent on crocheting and tree hugging." He scoffs. " _Humans_. I'll never understand your kind. Well, whatever, you can't please everyone. We can continue this overly sappy and diabetic reunion when we aren't in the middle of a war zone, how about that?"

An army of his Iron Legion robots fly and land close to a crate. Their own little plane, hidden from the Avengers, is loaded until its weight limit reaches its max.

"In the meantime, help me with this?" He pats a crate of vibranium like one would pat a good dog. "Victory, as it turns out, is kind of a strain on the shoulders."

* * *

 _"Safe house?"_

 _"Let's hope. Honey, I'm home! Hi. Sorry, company. Couldn't call ahead."_

 _"Don't worry about it, it's not like you ever do. You're a mess, Clint."_

 _"…This is an agent of some kind."_

 _"Yeah, yeah. Company, meet my sister, Laura."_

 _"Uh, hey. I… know all your names."_

 _"Ooh, incoming!"_

 _"Uncle Clint!"_

 _"I see you! Ugh, god, you're so heavy. How are you little troublemakers? Taking care of Lucky for me?"_

 _"Pizza Dog is the best, Uncle Clint, we love him."_

 _"Did you bring Auntie Nat?"_

 _"Well, why don't you hug her and find out?"_

 _"Auntie Nat!"_

 _"These are… slightly smaller agents? Okay, I'm gonna call it. What the hell is going on here?"_

* * *

Wanda enters her room with a look of complete horror on her face. "Ultron intends to annihilate the human race." She declares.

Tamika, speechless, looks up from her book and squints. Wanda doesn't look like she's kidding. Slowly, Tamika dog-ears her book and stands up, " That is a _very_ strange way to say hello."

Wanda relaxes minimally. "Not the time. Come, we have to go."

"Go where?"

"The Avengers are here. We have to warn them of Ultron's intentions." She makes a face. "I don't like them but they're the only people that stand a chance against Ultron. They have to stop him before it's too late."

"Where's Pietro?"

"Looking around."

"Cho?"

"Ultron shot her."

"So she's…?"

"Maybe. Maybe not. Pietro and I did not stick around to find out."

Tamika stops, pulling against the hand that's pulling her towards the door. Wanda, quite harried, looks at her with impatience written in every line of her face. Normally that would be enough to tie Tamika's tongue out, but given the circumstances… "Ah, then before we go, could I check in on her?"

Wanda is a second away from gaping.

" _What_?"

"If there's the smallest chance that she's alive, I can't leave her behind." Wanda doesn't appear to like the idea at all but between the two of them, she isn't the stubborn one. Tamika lets go of her hand and puts a couple of inches between them. "Tell you what: you go ahead, I'll catch up with you. You don't need me to figure out where he is. Just follow the explosions."

"I'm not leaving you behind."

"You won't be leaving me behind. Seriously, go on without me. I won't leave this building until I've taken care of everybody."

Wanda makes a few token protests, as she is wont to do, but ends up leaving Tamika behind all the same. The tall teenager is relieved that Wanda's left her to her own devices; until the weight of what she's doing finally comprehends. What if there are survivors? It will be her responsibility to ensure that they continue surviving until help comes around. Is she capable of that? Will help even come? Tamika knows nothing about first aid.

But she has to try. If someone has the power to do something and doesn't, and bad things happen, it's on them.

And so, Tamika finds a couple of green boxes that look like first aid kits and storms the lab. Immediately, she zeroes in on the groans of a survivor. As she makes her way over to them she sees that the deceased all have smoking holes in their heads or through their throats. It makes her nervous to think of the wound the survivor might have, and if she can do anything to help.

She finds the groaning victim under a table, curled in on themselves. Tamika slides over to the woman and turns her onto her back.

She swallows back bile at the gory mess of their shoulder. Their right arm has been blown clean off.

Tamika gags at that smell of scorched flesh and turns her head away, taking deep breaths through her mouth before turning back. The Korean woman looks young, either an intern or just very smart, and doesn't respond to Tamika's presence at all. Shock, then? Tamika props the Intern against one of the legs of the table and tears off the sleeve of the lab coat that wasn't obliterated. She waves her hand in front of her face. There is no response.

"Hey? Hi, can you hear me? Uh, what's the Korean words for—당신이 나를 확인을들을 수 있습니까?"

Nothing.

"Alright—no, it's cool. Calm down, don't panic, Tamika. You can handle this." _No, she really couldn't._ "What do you have to do first? Look at the situation, idiot. Prioritize. What's most important—" She stands up so suddenly that she bangs her head on the underside of the table. _Ouch_. "Bleeding!"

Scrambling to her feet, she searches for latex gloves or something, and is surprised to find none. For lack of gloves, Tamika tears apart the lab looking for—

" _Aha_!" She opens a cabinet and finds pristine white towels folded neatly. She grabs all of them and hightails it over to the Intern. She elevates what remains of her arm and wraps the wound in a couple of towels, putting pressure on the wound, which was about as much as she knew to do.

It probably wasn't a good idea for her to leave the Intern but the need to check for other survivors won out, and Tamika apologizes to the amputated lady before she abandons her to check on the other bodies.

Tamika ends up doing two rounds of the lab when she remembers that you could pass out from shock and that sound of the prone bodies on the floor might not have been dead ones. She drags all the survivors to her side of the room and attends to them with her mediocre medical knowledge. After she's sorted them out and had collected six now-physically-disabled scientists, she calls emergency services.

It takes her a while to figure out the number and explain what she'd done to help when she's _also_ bustling around, pressing her limited amount of white towels against the blood soaked ones wrapped around bleeding limbs, but it's worth it, she figures, if people survive. Her treatment isn't perfect. Due to the fact that she doesn't have six arms, she can't put pressure on everyone's wounds at the same time and she fears that would be enough to tip them over the edge.

But she doesn't stop trying.

She's done her best to organize the injured in a line where she can try and divide her attention between them without having to stretch her shoulders out of their sockets. It's when she gets up to find more towels that the lab entry door opens. Tamika jumps and wipes her forehead with the back of a bloody hand.

"You're here! Quick, they're over—" She stops when she turns to her visitors and finds they aren't from the hospital at all. The Captain stares at her warily, eyes on her bloodied hands. Before she can explain that it isn't hers but the victims (which, in hindsight, wouldn't have gone down well) his eyes have taken in the entire room and processed what it implies quickly. Ultron told them that he was a tactician, but Tamika hadn't realized what that meant until now.

"You're helping them?" He asks, sounding quite compassionate.

Tamika swallows nervously and nods. She wrestles with the urge to salute. Isn't he supposed to be a big deal? "Yes."

He nods, flashes her a wholesome smile, before his face settles into a stern frown. "Is Helen Cho still alive?"

"I—" Oh, _no_. Tamika makes a pathetic noise. "I haven't checked on her yet! She's supposed to be in her lab, I was supposed to see if she was alright but I got, er, distracted!"

Captain shakes his head and marches towards Helen Cho's lab. "It's alright, you're doing good work here." He tells her, clapping her shoulder as he walks by. "Good job."

Tamika wants to dwell on how strangely proud she feels to have received praise from a complete stranger, but now isn't the time. She rifles through cupboards for more towels and returns to her makeshift infirmary. There are people looking more and more pale from the blood loss that she can't do everything to stop, which is worrying, but Tamika trusts that the emergency services will be here soon.

The door to Cho's lab opens and Captain comes towards Tamika with the biologist herself in his arms. He places her on the floor with a delicacy that's surprising for a man of his size. Helen Cho, Tamika notes immediately, has all her limbs intact. Which might prove to be more trouble than it's worth, because that puts her wound too close to her heart. Tamika has no idea what to do with that, so she falls back on her default and piles the towels on top of the wound, pressing down hard.

"You'll be okay holding this place down?" Captain asks her. "I can't stay but—"

"No, go. Ultron needs to be stopped." Tamika meets his eyes and nods to reassure herself. His presence is a calming, stable one. The building stress and tears she was threatened by before he entered the building have gone. She feels… she feels like she can _do this_. "I can handle it."

Captain gives her a considering, pleased look. "I'm sure you can." He smiles and then sweeps out of the room. Thankfully, the calm that settled over her doesn't go with him.

True to her promise to Captain, she holds down her fort. The emergency services show up a few minutes after he leaves and take over. Tamika is glad to relinquish control of the situation onto professionals. She sticks around until all of the injured parties are carted out of the building and the only people left in the room are the paramedics checking the deceased and herself.

When the paramedics confirm what she already knows, she pushes her sleeves up and wrinkles her nose at the blood sticky on her hands.

But it doesn't disgust her to see her hands stained with blood. It doesn't scare her or worry her at all. Because she's just finished _saving lives_ and it feels… it feels _wonderful_.

That was _her_. No superpowers were necessary for her to save six lives. She didn't have to sacrifice anyone to do it, not innocent bystanders, not herself, _no one_.

"Were you the one who made the call?" A paramedic approaches her. His English is accented but otherwise flawless. Tamika nods. The paramedic smiles approving and hands her a warm towel. "Then good job. You kept them alive and kept your cool, that's not an easy thing to do. You saved their lives."

Tamika smiles for the first time in four years with all her teeth. She accepts the towel and scrubs off as much blood from her hands as it will let her. "Thank you," She flushes in pride. But she isn't done yet. Until an end has been put to Ultron, she can't be finished.

There is still much for her to do. And maybe that didn't have to be such a bad thing.


	2. 00 ant-man

**Title:** Right Through Me

 **Summary:** When most of your life is spent living in the background, it can be a bit intimidating to be thrust to the forefronts of a dramatic narrative. Luckily, Tamika Maihi is a self insert, so you can trust her to always recover from a tragic backstory. — SI, gen.

 **Rating:** T

 **Words:** 10,113

 **Warnings:** None.

 **Disclaimer:** Disclaimed.

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* * *

00.

 **right through me**

 _drabble from ant-man_

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* * *

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29.08.2015 — 11:10 AM

 _entry eighty-eight_

 _._

ONE ; it can be disturbingly cruel to strip everything back from a person to see the raw truth of who they truly are. You could almost consider it intimate. It's not; poking at bleeding wounds is not a skill to be proud of.

TWO ; you know someone whose smile belongs on a bony boy with broken teeth and cracked ribs. You've known him for a while, the man the smile belongs to, but you think today is the first time you've ever met him.

THREE ; it is still learning how to navigate the delicate situation that is human emotion. You wish it would not insist on learning it through her; it missteps frequently. She is sleeping now, but the tear-tracks have dried on her cheeks.

If it had such a thing, you would have burned it's heart right out of it's chest and ate it whole right there in middle of the rec room.

FOUR ; you met a small person who you will hope has a large impact. It remains to be seen whether this impact will be 'good' or 'bad' — for whatever that means.

FIVE ; you've been given a staff made of whalebone as a gift from your mentor. You gave her raspberries in return. It may feel like an insufficient gift now, but she smiled, close-lipped and bashful.

You might yet get the hang of this thing.

Things you have learned today:

1\. Sometimes it is difficult to determine whether the churning in your gut is encouragement or discouragement. Don't be so afraid of the uncertainty.

2\. A leap of faith goes a long way.

3\. Some friendships go deeper than skin; cut straight to the bone and heart and soul of you. Learn to embrace this.

4\. You hate fighting, but for certain people... for certain people, you will go to war.

5\. Painting a knife yellow does not make it a banana. The edge of a blade should not be sharpened on the broken bones of your spine. Don't forget what he has done.

6\. Someone mentioned _him_ today. You felt as if you were on the verge of collapse. You have been drinking tea for what feels like hours but still, your throat remains dry. You wonder when it will stop strangling you.

7\. You may not believe it — and as I write, I can't say that I have much hope myself — but you have it on good authority that while you will never get over the emptiness, it will get... better. Easier.

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* * *

.

With Sam running interference, it's pretty easy to catch the intruder.

What isn't easy is keeping him. While Sam's left to find a suitable container for their would-be-thief, Tamika holds the red-suited man's arms captive, keeping his thumbs very far away from the rest of his fingers. She knows it's painful. She knows that the knee she's burying in his back isn't helping either, but she needs answers, and can't have him running off before she can get them.

To the man, she hisses, "You, you can _shrink_. _How?_ "

The man pauses. Then, voice visibly nervous, begins to ramble. "Uh, I'd love to tell you how, but I'm _not_ _going to_ because then I'd get my ass kicked by a warrior princess and her decrepit dad. Not that that doesn't not happen on a daily basis but I like to avoid giving people specific reasons to beat me up. You know how it is. Or maybe you don't, since you busted my ass without seemingly breaking a sweat. Seriously, it's humiliating, you know? You don't even look old enough to be out of high school. Did you start your ninja training at birth or what? What's your secret? Is it — _oh owowowow!_ "

Tamika breathes heavily through her nose. She thinks her hands might be trembling slightly. There is a ball of dread in her stomach, giving off nausea like a flame gives off heat. She sputters, "It's just — your suit isn't the Yellowjacket so you can't have gotten the particle from Cross — unless, did you? Has he, oh _no_ , has he succeeded in shrinking organic material already — "

The man jerks under her iron hold, struggling to twist his head to peer up at her.

"Wait, you guys _know_ about _Cross?_ What, why haven't you guys done anything?"

Tamika blinks. "I was the one who found out about the operation, actually, during the demonstration where Cross first introduced the idea of the Yellowjacket but when I told Tony — "

" _Iron Man knows?!_ "

"— he said that it wasn't possible, that we'd have some time before we needed to send a threat analysis team, because his dad tried the formula and came out with nothing, but if _you've_ got a suit then that must mean — is Cross really that close after all?" She sounds terrified. She knows that isn't — that Nat doesn't like it when she lets her emotions take control of her, so she tries to rope it in. She's an agent now, whatever that means, so that means she's...

... Well, Tamika doesn't know what it means. Sometimes it means saving the little people from harm. Sometimes it's letting them die. Tamika isn't supposed to know about that last one, but she's always been good at getting into places she shouldn't be. Mostly it means that she isn't supposed to paint targets over her vulnerabilities in front of potential threats. Tamika's not very good at that one.

Tamika... doesn't always follow through with her orders, if she agrees with them at all. Wanda knows that. Steve knows that. Sam, especially, knows how Tamika feels about being pushed to the side and denied her right to assist others. Tamika's not the one in charge of the operation though, so it's not always her decision to make.

(Nothing grates quite as much as that does.)

There's a silence after she speaks. The man keeps struggling to look at her so Tamika, perhaps unwisely, eases up and allows him that small comfort. His entire body sighs in relief. He mumbles, "... Ah, sorry, Hank, I'm weak for puppy dog eyes." which thoroughly confuses Tamika. She assumes his helmet also works as comms, and swallows nervously. Oh boy. She hopes — this guy better not be a bad guy.

The man begins to speak again, sounding frantic and nervous and rambling like he thinks Tamika will seriously compromise his health if he doesn't get it all out in under twenty-seconds. That isn't true, Tamika wouldn't hurt him any further than she had to to dissuade him from trying to hurt _her_ , but he doesn't know that. If it gets him talking quick, then Tamika won't enlighten him either.

"Look, I can't get into the details but I'm _not_ using Cross' products. I'm working independently from any agency, just a guy wanting to help out." Tamika frowns. The man sighs again, before hesitantly continuing. "... But what I _can_ tell you is that the team I'm working with? We're stopping this dirt bag Cross guy. But you have something we need to be able to do it — a small prototype technology that disrupts servers. Without it, Cross _will_ win and evil villain stuff happens. We don't want that, I'm pretty sure."

There are two choices Tamika knows she can make: Keep the man apprehended until Sam returns with a way to keep him captive, or trust the instincts that have saved her countless times before, and assist him.

Which isn't really that much of a choice at all.

"...Okay."

"You're helping?"

"Stark doesn't think this is an issue for the Avengers to stick their noses in. But I'm not an Avenger. What does it look like?"

.

* * *

.

"Where'd he go?!"

There's a brief moment wherein Tamika considers lying to Sam. She doesn't take the opportunity. She owes Sam a lot, security in her own body not the least of it, and if she can't trust him with this, she won't know where to draw the line. And Sam Wilson, Tamika had learned in those first few months of horror, was one person she could trust to have her back.

She squares her shoulder and looks him in the eye. "I... let him go." She says.

Sam looks like he's been slapped. His jaw unhinges, and he blinks at her rapidly. Tamika doesn't move a fraction of an inch. She wants to but she's learning how to stand tall instead of hiding away at the first hint of danger to herself these days. Nat's teachings, she suspects. "You did _what?_ Oh no. You ain't kidding, are you? _Why?_ "

"Because he isn't a threat."

"Tam, you _know_ that isn't for you to decide."

"Doesn't mean I'm wrong. He has a tight schedule to keep, Sam. I _had_ to let him go. People are in danger."

Sam lets that sink into the silence. Tamika doesn't relax. Tamika has a hard time relaxing these days. Her friend tilts his head and, with a softer, steadier voice than earlier, asks: "What if he was lying?"

Tamika rears back in offense. Her eyes flash, and she returns, with a half-pleading voice, "He _wasn't_ — "

"I know you believe that but, man, just think about it. What if he lied to you and people die 'cause of him? What then?"

 _Why do they never believe her?_

She thinks of Tony Stark. Of how her fingers had trembled and her heart had pounded in her ears as she came to him with her concern. How she told him that Cross Industries was experimenting with shrinking tech, and how close they'd gotten to succeeding, and the way he'd laughed and waved his hand and told her _not to worry about it, because if he couldn't get it then he doubted a no-name like Darren Cross would come close._ His words had done nothing to soothe the tightly coiled spring of dread inside of her, but it had added something more to the cocktail of emotions — distrust, to name one. Betrayal, to name another.

She thinks, passingly, that if Sam chooses to chase after the man, she will never be able to look him in the eye again.

"... Then I was wrong. And I'll have to live with it." She says, lips thin.

"Yeah, you will." Sam sighs again, and scrubs his hand over his buzzed head. His eyes are distant as he stares at a point over her shoulder. Even when his mind is elsewhere, Sam looks kind. Kinder than Tamika thinks she deserves. Definitely kinder than she knows what to do with. Even dressed to the nines in leather and metal, with a gun at his hips and knowing the location of his secret knife, she sees the man who pinches her cheek and crows _'thatta girl!'_ when she wins in Mario Kart; at this point, she doesn't know how _not_ to put her complete faith in him.

Oh, but how she _hopes_ , in that moment, that Sam will not turn his back on her.

The thought grows smaller in his eyes. He focuses on her face and asks, "...How certain are you that he's a good guy, Tam?"

Something like hope cautiously begins to sprout in her ribs. "100%." She answers.

Sam's eyebrows raise. "Really?"

" _Really._ "

He is silent for a moment longer. Tilts his head. Watches her for weakness. Then he nods, agreeable, and scratches the bridge of his nose. "Alright then. I'm trustin' you with this." He says, and then begins the complicated process of detaching his jet-pack from his back.

Tamika nearly squeaks: "Sam?"

"If you tear up my 'pack, we can pass it off like that Tic Tac busted it after he slipped you. Keep you outta trouble for as long as it takes them to figure out we're lying."

Her breath explodes out of her. Her eyes begin to burn. " _Sam_ — "

"This way, if you're wrong about this guy, then it's on the _both_ of us." Sam grandly announces, sounding like they're talking about what to have for dinner, and not potential treason. Something reaffirms itself in Tamika's chest at the sight of him stripping his beloved jet-pack off. The pacifist teen thinks, _I will follow you into war, Sam Wilson_. He looks up at her and grins, all brotherly love and companionship. "We'll take the blow together."

"Why would you—? You could get it trouble. You could get _hurt_."

Sam's smart eyes see everything that she isn't saying, and his kindness persuades him against saying anything about the raw wounds she can't help exposing. He places his jet-pack gently on the ground, treating it with respect even as they're about to tear through the circuits like a tornado, and gestures for her to come forward. As she does, he says, "Eh. We gotta stick together, otherwise it'll get ugly. Plus, I trust you." He shrugs, like that isn't a big deal, like it isn't completely _earth-shattering_ for Tamika to have an adult who listens, _who explicitly trusts_ , in her decisions.

It's only the thought of how embarrassing it would be that stops Tamika from crying.

(She's always been so quick to cry — Tamika Maihi, the _tangiweto_ who always felt too much, who always gave too much, and received nothing in return.)

Absently, already focused on his task, Sam passes her a small wire cutter and screwdriver, and continues on to say, "Even though you _do_ drink all the OJ."

Tamika only watches him for a moment, a small, cautious smile on her face, before she clears her throat and turns her attention to the jet-pack. It's a beautiful piece; a masterpiece of electricity and wires. Tamika would usually be hesitant to deface such a work of art, but in this situation, with the plastic of the handle warming in her grip and Sam beginning to hum a Marvin Gaye song under his breath, Tamika thinks she will be glad to do it.

She snips a wire and whispers in her defense, "... I like the pulp."

.

* * *

.

When the doorbell rings and no one answers it, Scott's not particularly surprised. Basic manners are lost on the Van Dyne family. He's pretty sure they've both completely forgotten how to pretend to be normal human beings, as shown by the suspicious looks they give the wooden door. Scott waits for one of them to get up — hey, it's _their_ house, and _their_ responsibility to answer the goddamn door, _not his_ — and realizes that, if he doesn't move, no one's gonna.

He's not impressed. "Wow." He announces flatly to the suspicious father-daughter duo. Hank's mouth flattens at his voice. "You guys suck at this civilian thing, don't you?" Hope sends him a scathing look. Scott smiles back at her, maybe slightly sarcastically.

"If it's so important to you," Hank says dryly, "you answer the door."

Out of spite, Scott stands up and says, "Fine! I'll be the adult here. Maybe I'll teach you a thing or two about being real human beings, huh? How about that?" Hope snorts. Ignoring that, Scott whirls around and trots obediently to the door. When he throws it open, he's prepared to engage in a conversation with the presumed-mailman loudly and pointedly.

Imagine his surprise when the person at the door isn't wearing anything remotely similar to a mailman uniform.

Standing at his doorstep is the girl from the Warehouse, the young superhero who, surprisingly, had been the one to catch him and then, even _more_ surprisingly, had also _released_ him. She's as unnaturally gigantic as ever, with earthen-toned skin and glowing moss eyes. Scott thinks she's one of the heroes from the Sokovia business — the young one who protected the citizens as best as she could. Scott can't imagine that responsibility, or that guilt; she did the best she could, one person fending off many to defend even more, but if that were Scott — he knows that he would feel every loss as keenly as a bullet.

He thinks they're calling her Ghost, these days.

Honestly, Scott's finding it difficult to see her as that larger-than-life hero, at the moment. Ghost is shifting nervously, fingers playing with the hem of her plaid shirt, and is actively refusing to make eye contact with him. As a criminal, Scott can't help but find the action suspicious, and instinctively scans the streets for any Crown Vic's or suspicious-SHIELD-type-agents lingering in the bushes. Not that he was _expecting_ to, per say, but he's still pretty relieved to find no sign of any of those Very Bad Things.

It's just a nervous teenage girl at the door. Nothing too weird.

(If he conveniently chooses to forget that she single-handedly crushed him in a fight even when he was going max Ant-Man on her, then that's his decision.)

((And that she could walk through walls. And turn invisible. And could probably kill him with her pinky finger.))

He plasters an obnoxious grin on his face and leans slightly against the door, giving Hope and Hank full-view of their guest. He greets her loudly. "Heeeey, it's you! How'd you find me?"

"Hank Pym's address is in the phone book," Ghost admits quietly, glancing side to side. She looks unaccountably anxious. Unlike the last time they encountered each other, she isn't her Ghost costume, the black and grey catsuit with the chains and staff. Instead, she's wearing a baseball cap, and _way_ more plaid than Scott thinks she should be. Her hair is curlier when it isn't being held back in a bun.

She looks startlingly average like this, and almost too damn young to be alone.

Scott frowns and pokes between her brows. Ghost jumps out of her skin. "What's wrong? You look pretty upset considering we just _saved the world._ "

Ghost hesitates on something, tipping backwards and then forwards on the heels of her feet. Then, "I'm not supposed to be here." Ghost confesses in a hushed voice. "I'm tailing someone from A.I.M. and he's probably already on his flight to Queens by now. I'm kind of... supposed to be there. Urgently."

 _Woah_.

"Tailing someone? Aren't you like... too young for that stuff? Isn't super spy stuff PG-rated? Parental Guidance recommended?"

"Wanda thought so too," She remarks dryly, before shaking her head and getting to the point. Scott takes a moment. _The Scarlet Witch Wanda?_ "I should be on a plane but I wanted to check in, make sure you were still, I don't know, breathing?" The young hero shrugs and rubs the back of her neck. "The news didn't have much of an idea about what was going on since all they had to go on were police reports, civilian eye witnesses, and the fact that Pym Lab is playing an elaborate game of Hide 'n' Seek. The only footage was taken by a crappy iPhone showing Pym Lab disappearing into thin air."

"And you got worried." Scott nodded in understanding, pulling a face. "I'm a bit flattered that you care, honestly, I'm just the dude who broke into your house and stole one of your toys."

Ghost smiles tightly. "Yeah, and I'm the baby-faced brat who let you leave with it. If you'd turned out to be an enemy, I wouldn't be here."

Scott winces. "Yikes. Yeah, ew, bad stuff. Luckily for the world, I'm not as much as an asshole as my criminal records would have you believe, huh? Dodged a bullet there."

Ghost laughs. It's not like Cassie's giggles, or Hope's chuckles. It's like — she's not used to it, he guesses. Like she doesn't laugh often. It's a majorly depressing thought. Scott tells the thought to 'fuck off' and leave him alone, but he's not sure it works that well. "So everything's fine?" She pushes, looking mostly relieved, and slightly cautious about something. Scott's beginning to think the nervousness is just apart of her face. "No one died?"

"We're all whole and alive, kiddo. Now you can go to sleep at night without wondering if the world is about to end tomorrow." Scott waggles his eyebrows. "I guess I'm kind of a superhero now? It's a thing that happened." He shrugs like it isn't a big deal to him, which is such a bald face lie that Hope wouldn't be able to resist a snarky comment if she were there.

Ghost does that startled-laugh thing again and steps back, putting more distance between them. She stuffs her hands into her pockets. "Guess you are." She grins, all wolfishly pleased. And a bit smug. She's probably earned that one, Scott thinks. As someone who was also once a teenager, he knows the vicious pleasure that came with being right after everyone kept telling you that you were wrong. "Thanks for not letting me down, Mr Lang."

"Uh." Scott blinks, before nodding wisely. "Yes, of course, you're welcome." He notices that she's slowly inching backwards and raises his eyebrows. "That's it? You're going already?"

Ghost looks very apologetic. "I'd stay for tea, but I wasn't kidding earlier. If I let that guy fly to Queens without me, I'll have a lot of angry Avengers on my back."

"Adults," Scott smirks, "they never put enough faith in the kids, do they?"

"No." Ghost agrees softly, much more serious than Scott. He remembers, suddenly, that Iron Man didn't take her warning about Cross seriously. How it motivated her to turn against her friends and help him — an intruder and potential enemy — and cringes. Oops. Foot, meet mouth. "No, they don't."

Great. He upset the kid. Now he feels bad. How to rectify it? Damned if he had any idea. "Hey, Ghost."

She blinks down at him — and _damn,_ this kid is _big,_ what do they feed her? — looking slightly surprised at the name. He sort of wishes he knew her actual name, so he could use it, but he... doesn't. The Avengers were vigilant when it came to keeping Ghost's identity under lock and key. Scott respects them for that. He respects the Avengers for a lot of shit but them giving their superhero minor as much privacy as they can afford to give her? That's pretty cool.

"I know you're probably bummed that Stark didn't take you seriously — " He starts, about to give the hero a comforting and wise lecture that actual good fathers are known for, which is just as surprising to him as it evidently is for her when she catches on to what he's doing.

Perhaps fortunately, Ghost cuts him off, face purposefully indifferent. "It's okay. I get it. If I hadn't seen it, I wouldn't have believed it either. Plus, he's probably regretting it now, so, like, _lesson learned._ Thanks, though," She looks more sincere now and less like a generator of saltiness. "For trying to make me feel better." She clarifies, as if Scott's unaware of how big of a fool he was about to make of himself for her.

"I _wasn't_ trying to make you feel better." Scott denies instantly. God, he's full of it. Of course that was what he was trying to do. And judging by the distressed aura the teenage is giving off, he's probably going to continue trying. "You sure you can't stay for a cup of tea? I know how to make ants put sugar in there now."

Bad idea?

Ghost looks vaguely horrified.

Yup. Bad idea. Should not have mentioned the ants. No one likes insects in their food. Obviously.

"No, it's okay. I really have to get going." Ghost finally steps out of his reach and smiles awkwardly, saluting sarcastically. "America thanks you for your service to the country."

Scott cringes, then laughs, then scratches his arm. "Aren't you Australian?"

Ghost rolls her eyes. "I'm from _New Zealand._ " She corrects tersely. Scott makes a mental note to google what the hell a 'New Zealand' is. "See you for now, Mr Lang. I'm sure this won't be the last time we'll meet each other."

"Oi, don't you dare come back unless you have Captain America with you!" Scott tells her sternly as she starts trotting away down the sidewalk. "You hear me, kid? I want to shake Captain America's hand!"

"You got it!" She calls back in jest. She disappears around a corner quickly.

Scott ducks back into the house, feeling pretty satisfied with himself. He closes and locks the door, nodding to himself — _handled that like a boss, Scotty, great fucking effort_ — when he turns and nearly headbutts Hope.

He yells in a manly fashion.

"Christ! How long have you been standing there?!"

"Was that actually Ghost?" Hope asks curiously, peering intently at his face. "She isn't at all like the news reports her as."

He huffs. "Yeah, tell me about it." She didn't act like a naive hipster teenager who'd bitten off more than she could chew at all. Given how quickly she'd managed to apprehend him, she also wasn't the noisy brat who run underfoot and kept messing up operations for the Avengers, either. Scott would know. He used to work with the weirdo's before Baskin Robbins found out... that is to say, the 'noisy brats', not the Avengers, because Scott hasn't ever and will likely never work with the Avengers, nor would he ever willingly and in control of his own mind choose to call the Avengers 'weirdos'.

"Young." Hope continues, voice deceptively even.

Suspicious now, Scott cautiously agrees. "Mmmhm, really young. Not even out of high school."

"Pretty, too. She must have unworthy boys slobbering all over her."

Scott wrinkles his nose. "God, I hope not. Kid's had a tough life. Average teenage boys don't deserve her."

"Bet that gets your dad instincts all up in arms." Hope says it so casually that Scott almost misses it.

 _Almost._

"I do _not_ want to be her father, Hope!"

.

* * *

.

Tamika (much to the actual man's embarrassment) is not shy about her admiration of Steve Rogers.

It both flusters and makes him itchy under the skin in turns — that a sixteen year old girl under his care, who throws herself into fights she doesn't want to fight, looks up to him. Admittedly, part of his discomfort comes from growing up the little guy who used to fight to defend dames who made it clear they didn't need _nor_ want defending; appreciation used to be a hard won respect for Steve, but waking up seventy years in the future, people defer to him unless they had a handwritten specific, personal reason _not_ to.

Steve's caught up with his media footprint, naturally. Since Captain America technically belonged to the government after he'd nosedived into the arctic, anyone and everyone with an agenda that needed pushing would print their message with his face promoting it. Which would have been tolerable if all the damn agendas _"Captain America"_ was pushing weren't _blatant_ violations of _Steve Roger's_ morals.

So when it's someone he knows that admires him, it makes it different from the rest of the world. Historians, politicians, civilians, the only image of Captain America that they have access to is the monster propaganda personality the government made him out to be. They don't know better, and though Steve _aches_ to correct them, he knows he can't without suffering Pepper's ire.

But Tamika... He _works_ with her, _visits her studio apartment_ once every week to make sure she and Wanda are okay, so the fact that she might believe the garbage that's printed about him and continues to _admires_ the fabricated personality — it suddenly _becomes_ personal. It's discomforting because the kid's admiring a fictional character invented to sell war bonds, a fictional character who, after his death, was promoted as a right-wing conservative, which is everything Steve _isn't._

Steve's problem with it is simple: The Captain America that Tamika grew up with and later went on to idolize is a _lie._ It's wrong. She doesn't want to be _Steve_ growing up, she wants to be _Captain America,_ and maybe no one except Bucky ( _bucky, bucky, bucky)_ or Sam understand the dissonance between man and icon, but _Holy Mary,_ does it piss him off something fierce anyway.

But he digresses.

Steve doesn't dislike Tamika. He respects her, actually, because she's a genuinely good kid. Interested in the current affairs, willing to do what she can to protect the underdogs from the infinite bullies of the world for as long as she is able to. She helps as best as she can without compromising her own morals. If it weren't for the fact that she's quieter and taller at sixteen that Steve was at twenty-two, she'd be like a female him.

It's just... Captain _fucking_ America _._

Steve tells Sam about his concerns once. That Tamika's admiring a fella who don't exist, not really, and Sam'd laughed. Said, "Wow, Steve, you sure the serum fixed your eyes or is your blindness incurable?" Before stealing his coffee and refusing to elaborate on what he meant.

(Sam may be his best friend but that didn't mean he couldn't be a serious punk sometimes.)

In fact, Sam's cryptic teaching goes unsolved for a couple of months.

In that time, Steve manages to continue his routine of awkwardly curbing Tamika when she's looking particularly star-eyed while simultaneously pretending he's doing nothing of the sort, getting into scrapes with an uncooperative Tony no less than eleven times, suffering silently as Nat tries (and fails) to set him up with a few women, suffers silently _again_ after Clint gets his hearing aids blown out of his head and is awful to be around for _weeks_ because he's so angry. Steve even manages to find yet _another_ one of HYDRA's super secret underground bunkers filled with still-warm corpses executed by an untraceable bullet to the head. He gets a lot of shit done in the time it takes him to decipher Sam's meaning.

More specifically, it takes a report of insubordination and a trip to New York headquarters.

"Shrinking tech?" Steve cuts into Agent Boldon's report somewhat incredulously. "Someone has a hold of shrinking tech and I didn't know about it?"

"Mr Stark personally analysed the threat and rated it as low, sir. He recommended that we review it at a later date and, er, _stop wasting his time with scientific improbabilities when he's busy improving the new world._ Sir."

Fucking Stark. Of course he did.

Steve works his jaw and tempers that spark of rage. Actually, he attempts to smother it, but he can never quite manage to do that so he instead pretends that he isn't angry in the first place. Which he's constantly aware isn't true in the slightest. Still, he bottles it up, labels it ' _Things we will never deal with. Ever.'_ and stuffs it away into the dark, neglected recesses of his mind.

"How do Falcon and Ghost come into this?" Steve asks. "Were they the response team?"

"The Falcon immediately moved to the source of the triggered alarm to investigate the breach. Upon discovering the... shrunken individual, they engaged in combat for approximately six minutes before the enemy slipped and infiltrated the storage shed. However, Ghost had been waiting for him there and apprehended the threat. This is where it gets tricky, sir."

Steve sighs and gestures for Agent Boldon to continue.

"The Falcon left to find a way of containing the intruder and implicitly trusted Ghost to keep him apprehended. He says that when he returned, the intruded had escaped Ghost and engaged in combat with him, during which he sabotaged The Falcon's suit and disabled his jet pack's flight system."

From what Steve knew of Tamika, he knew that couldn't be right. She didn't like fighting, but she hated losing fights even more. If her prisoner escaped, it was no accident. But Steve doubted _they_ knew that about her, which meant willfully releasing a potential threat wasn't what she was being pulled up for. Unless...

Agent Boldon reads something on his face and nods severely. "Yes, sir. It's exactly what you think. Mr Stark investigated Falcon's suit and determined all damage done to it superficial. As it turned out, Ghost had assisted the intruder in stealing Stark-owned tech and Falcon was an accomplice in fabricating an alibi to keep her out of trouble. Agent Hill decided to detain the two until you could fly in from Azerbaijan and determine whether they were still fit for duty."

"Still fit for duty? That's why I'm here: to be the Judge, Jury and Executioner?"

Agent Boldon looks taken aback at the hostility in Steve's voice. "W-well, yes sir, I suppose so, sir. They broke several restrictions by conspiring with the intruder and allowing him to escape with stolen tech. Mr Stark thought the role would be more fitting for you than himself."

"Why?" Steve purses his lips. "I'm biased."

Again, Agent Boldon looks surprised. "Why? Sir, you're _Captain America._ " Thanks, thinks Steve as he rolls his eyes, I wasn't aware of that. Certainly appreciate the reminder. "Whatever you decide, we're sure you'll consider what's best for the team."

God's righteous man. That's what Loki had called him. Defender of the people, America's National Icon. A hero to the world. Selfless, courageous, always thinking of the desires of the greater good. Captain America: the People's people, thinking not of the trees but of the forest.

He shoves away the anger. Not the time, not the time, not the time. They've got Sam locked up. He can't waste time and rant to a clueless agent about how Captain America _isn't_ Steve Rogers, not if he wants to fix Tony's mistake.

(And it may be a bit unfair but Steve is pretty sure Tony's right in the middle of this. Because Tony _always_ is. He just can't stop himself.)

"Right." Steve says flatly. "Did you identify the intruder?"

"No sir, not yet. We're working on it."

"What about the threat? This Darren Cross, where is he?"

"Dead." Answers Agent Boldon, grimacing. "As it turns out, Cross _was_ dabbling in the science of shrinking organic material and _had_ succeeded. His suit supposedly malfunctioned and wiped his out of physical existence, but when we went to question the eye-witnesses, it was clear they were hiding something. We suspect that it was the same man who infiltrated the base who stopped Cross."

Okay. Now Steve is getting agitated. "So the fella Sam and Tamika helped _isn't_ a bad guy?"

"That... remains to be seen, sir, but we suspect — "

"I don't give a damn what you _suspect._ What you _know_ is this so-called 'intruder' stole Avenger property to _save the world._ To any normal person, that would make him a hero, not a threat. As far as I can see, you're detaining Sam and Tamika for no reason."

Agent Boldon looks horribly embarrassed. "S-Sir, I — "

"Don't." Steve sighs. "Just take me to their cells. I wanna talk to them before I get them outta there."

"I — of course, sir, right this way, sir."

.

—

.

Steve, while never being the first to admit it, is perfectly aware of the enormous chip he carries around on his shoulder.

He's good at hiding it — learned during his early days as Captain America when the suits would try 'n sit him down for fighting for an opportunity to go to war — and no one but the people he wanted knowing were aware of the Steve behind the mask. Waking up in the future only amplified the need for it. The modern world wants a hero, not a disabled punk from Brooklyn who broke his bones against Jimmy's jaw, and most of the time, Steve's alright with giving it to them.

Doesn't change that he'll get into fights for no other reason than him wanting to, but it cloaks it. Though sometimes it feels more like he's throwing a blanket over a mountain and trying to pass it off as a molehill.

What it _means_ is that Steve's real good at finding opposition where there's none. Sometimes the opposition doesn't shape itself as a jerk with shoulders squarer than his head. As Bucky would attest to, sometimes opposition was a mom-shaped nurse who'd all but nail him to the bed when he got the shivers, or a crooked-smiled best friend who'd sit him down to bite his head off even as he wrapped his bleeding knuckles. Condescension and patronizing looks were as much Steve's enemies as a bully was. He's bigger now, though, with the brawn to back up his smart mouth, so it's not the patronizing that grates on his nerves.

It's the baseless admiration.

So, yeah. Steve doesn't _like it_ , but he _does_ have a chip on his shoulder, and he _does_ go looking for reasons to get his hackles raised. Maybe there ain't much _Steve_ left these days, but even Captain America needs a cause to constantly fight against.

(— _captain america pretending you could live without a war_ —)

Shamefully, he admits, to himself if no one else, that his distance from Tamika might'a been one of them instances.

He walks into the cell block without Agent Boldon's presence, light-footed like he learned when he was barely ninety pounds wet. He makes as little noise as possible. It isn't that difficult as the agent present is making enough noise to cover whatever Steve himself is making, but not quiet enough to go unnoticed by Sam.

His friend is behind the glass, nice and secure, with his knee drawn to his chest and mumbling something to himself. Probably song lyrics, knowing him. Sam likes his music, even though his singing voice isn't something to write home about. He's in the right corner of the cell, flush against the window, and peering as much as he is able at the scene the agent and Tamika are making. He notices Steve's presence instantly.

Sam flashes his a grin, tips his head back in greeting, then puts his fingers to his lips and jabs his finger in Tamika's direction. Taking this as a signal meaning, _shut up and watch,_ Steve listens. He keeps to the entryway and watches the interaction, a dutiful shadow to the exchange.

It's no skin off his back. Steve knows better than anyone that you only ever know the true face of a guy when they're talking to someone who isn't in a position to fight back.

And behind a reinforced glass cage collared like a dog, there's no way in hell that Tamika can fight back. At least, not physically.

"You're a disgrace," The agent bites. Steve assumes he's an interrogator. Steve is not particularly impressed by the kid. He looks mean; not the way Natasha looks mean or Clint looks mean, but the way Harvey Jefferson who-used-to-holler-at-all-the-dressed-up-dames was mean, Peter-Johnson-who-let-a-door-slam-in-an-old-lady's-face mean. "You don't deserve to be a hero. You're a waste of resources and time, and I think you know that. As if it isn't bad enough that agents who have better things to do have to babysit you, you can't ever follow simple protocol? Are you brain dead?"

Tamika twitches but does not rise to the bait. Steve has to admire that. When he was her age, all a bully had to do was—

Ah, not that that matters anymore. He's not that kid any more. Physically.

"Did your time in HYDRA make you deaf as well as stupid?"

Steve looks to Sam and waits for his friend to look at him. He flashes through some sign language quickly. _How long has this been going on?_

Sam takes a visible moment to translate the hand signs, and then slowly fumbles through a response. _Closer to an hour than not._ Reading his frown better than his hands, Sam quickly continues, fumbling through words with so little finesse that Steve has to make assumptions about what he means. _I tried to stop the man but he wasn't having it. Neither is Tamika._

Tamika's name was illustrated by the sign "QUIET" and "MOON". Clint had been the one to pick it when he caught her in his perch watching the stars with a content little smile on her face. He'd been struggling with a name for her then, but catching her doing such a peaceful thing had similarly amused and endeared him to her character. After that sneak-peak into her personality, coming up with a name had been all too easy for him.

Sam says, _She'll reach her limit eventually._

Steve isn't sure he approved of the idea of letting Tamika sit through the interrogation on the off-chance that she wouldn't suffer a breakdown, but ultimately relents to Sam's advice. Sam's infinitely better with people than Steve could ever hope to be, and better still with Tamika. It isn't even a Councillor thing, it's just a Sam thing, and maybe a Sam-and-Tamika thing.

Hopefully.

The agent continues brutally. He verbally tears Tamika to pieces, going so far as to bring up her past in HYDRA, her 'uselessness' to the team — Steve has to grit his teeth at that — and how she's dead weight to Wanda, barely adequate replacement for the 'Maximoff boy', _but a replacement nonetheless._ It's this one, Steve can see, that hits her hard enough to crack something. The fracture is displayed all over her face for a quick flash.

For a SHIELD agent, former or not, it's enough of an opening. The agent attempts to exploit this, and carries on to say: "And how about your baby crush on Cap, huh? What do you think he'd say about this?"

Oh.

Steve glances over at Sam for any hint on how to react to this. Sam doesn't even look in his direction, childish glee all over his face as he eagerly awaits a reply. Steve scowls at him, but Sam doesn't receive the look. Jerk.

"You turned on your team and risked the lives of _millions_ of people to satisfy your _curiosity_. You should be ashamed of yourself, Miss Maihi." The agent says, before deliberately pausing and looking Tamika in the eye. She meets his gaze squarely. There's silence wherein everyone knows what the agent is going to say next.

So when he then says, "I know Captain Rogers would be." Steve not surprised, for all that he's righteously indignant.

It's as he thinks _that's enough_ and steps forward to announce his presence does Tamika _hiss_ through her gritted teeth. In a flash, she's on her feet and slamming her fists against the glass, indignation and fury not unlike his own written in every line of her face. Steve knows that it isn't the comment about him that's fueling her, that it's the comment about Pietro that ground away at her defenses like they were nothing, and that relieves him, because it means she has legs to stand on, genuine hardy emotion to fall back on if she looks like she's losing. A strong resolution works as well as any Adamantium shield.

"Then clearly, you don't know a damn thing about Steve!" Tamika yells, lip curled back in a sneer. Steve blinks rapidly and sends Sam another look. Sam, of course, has his hands clapped over his mouth and gleeful eyes decidedly _not_ on him. Once again: no help there.

Continuing on and visibly stunning the agent with the promise of violence in her voice, Tamika says, "I let that man leave because he was and remains innocent. He wasn't going to hurt a soul and I trusted that he was a good person. Like hell I'm going to explain myself to cannon fodder like you. I know your type, seen grunts like you all the time in HYDRA."

"Little guys too tall for their boots, trying to be bigger than they really are. Well, _you aren't the alpha,_ okay? You're not even important enough to register on anyone's radar. How's _that_ for insignificant, huh? Oh, don't give me that look — _I don't care_ if I'm shipped back to New Zealand first thing tomorrow! If by allowing someone the tools to help save lives means I'm put behind bars, then maybe _I'm_ not the issue here!"

He knows he doesn't deserve to, but regardless, there is a sharp sensation of pride that bursts in his gut at her words. Steve grins, crooked and smug and viciously pleased, like he used to when he'd get a good right-hook in that'd knock out a few baby teeth; all bloodied teeth and bruised knuckles in the back of some Brooklyn alley somewhere.

Steve _knows_ he isn't imagining the victorious hooting coming from Sam's cell.

Tamika ignores it; flat-out _snarls_ , more life to her in her anger than there ever has been in all the time Steve has known her. Honestly, she sounds more poisonous than teenager. Not professional and impersonal like Peggy's anger, or slow and toxic like Nat's. It's the explosion of pent-up-frustration anger; breathe-in-through-your-nose-and-out-through-your-mouth-anger; blood-singing and hand-twitching and _come a little closer, buddy, we'll see who's laughing when I'm done with you_ anger.

It is anger that Steve is intimately familiar with.

"And for your information, _agent,_ I think Steve _would_ agree with that." And before the agent can come up with a way to exploit that, Tamika finishes with a final-sounding, " _Not_ that it matters; I won't apologize _for_ _anyone_ or _to anyone,_ ", curls her fingers under her collar, and yanks it from her intangible neck without hesitation.

The agent is still as a corpse.

The angry little teenager smiles sharply and says, "At least HYDRA knew how to muzzle their rabid dog properly." There is no way the agent missed the way she threw his own words back at him. Seeming to realize his precarious position, the agent glowers at her and turns on his heel, probably intending to soldier march himself out of the room.

Needless to say, Steve's position at the door stops that plan right in its tracks.

Tamika looks just as surprised as the agent does to see him. She blinks stupidly at him, before her eyes widen and her cheeks burn bright enough to stand out even on her dark face. Steve's still grinning, too, so there's no doubt how he feels about her little speech. Must be as prideful as it is embarrassing for her.

For the agent, however... maybe not so much.

Steve's prepared to promise that much.

"C-Captain Rogers, sir!" The agent salutes him sloppily. No formal military training then if he couldn't pull off a proper salute. "You're here to talk to the prisoners then, sir? Have you been observing?"

"Could say that," Steve raises his eyebrows. "Saw the way you riled Tam up, if that's what you're asking."

The agent catches the affectionate nickname, if the way his face pales is any indication. If the way Tamika's burns even brighter is, she catches it too. She at least realizes how unusual it is. The agent has no idea, though, which is the important thing.

Steve smiles his butter-wouldn't-melt-in-my-mouth smile and continues over the agent's sudden spluttering, "I'll take over here if you won't mind, agent."

The agent snaps off a salute again. "Sir!" He tromps off towards Steve, towards the _door,_ actually, but that's pretty much Steve by this point anyway. He looks nervous the closer he gets. It's more amusing than it has any right to be — okay, that's a lie. Steve likes being big; it always has the bullies jumping at their own shadows. He can't say he doesn't think they don't deserve it.

Steve steps aside to allow the agent exit without obstruction. When he gets close enough, however, he claps his hand to the agent's shoulder and says, "You can see Romanoff about your next shift, by the way."

The agent sounds baffled. "Um, w-what—?"

"I didn't tell you? Sorry, that's my fault." Steve blinks, all wide-eyed and innocent. "I just decided that you're to be suspended without leave, agent. Enjoy the vacation. I hear the weather's cold enough to allow snowboarding in New Zealand these days."

"I-I—" The agent sighs and ducks his head. "... Understood, sir. May I leave, sir?"

Steve doesn't give that a verbal reply, just tightens his grip on the agent's shoulder before patting it and letting the guy go. The door hisses closed behind him. Feeling justifiably better than earlier, Steve trots forward towards the cell control panel and disengages cell's three and four. The glass sinks into the floor with a low hum.

Sam bounds out towards him instantly, clapping his back cheerfully. "It's my _boi!_ Where you been, Rogers? We've been waiting forever for you!"

Ignoring what is sure to be an over-exaggeration, Steve pushes Sam's face away with his knuckle and snorts. "Fuck off, I got here as soon as I could, not my fault you got the patience of a kid."

"That really hurts, Steve."

"Oh, no, that certainly wasn't my intention when I told you to 'fuck off', Sam. I'm ever so sorry for hurtin' your feelings."

Sam barks a laugh at that. "Don't go usin' your Cap voice on me, man. Thanks for getting us out in the first place, really."

"You two shouldn't've been in here," Steve sucks on the inside of his cheek and lightly chews on it in irritation. Old habit, better than the grinding-his-jaw thing he'd picked up recently. "We don't even _follow_ old SHIELD protocols anymore."

"Probably just Tony trying to teach us a lesson," Sam says, all non-committal. "We did let some dude we don't even know skip off with Daddy Stark's tech. Must have pushed a few buttons of his."

Steve frowns and rolls his eyes to the ceiling. "I'll talk to him." He all but groans out. "Christ, he's a handful."

"Hey, hey, no harm done. Don't go starting any wars on _my_ account."

"Who said it'd be on _your_ account, Wilson? _Tamika_ was the one who got torn into by the agent while you giggled on the sidelines."

Tamika, who'd been content to watch them talk with the same sparkly-eyed look that Steve was used to, jerked at her name. "What, me? You want to defend my honor?" Sam waggled his eyebrows at her. She lashed out with her leg to nail him in the shin, mouth twitching when her hit connected. She didn't actually move her eyes from Steve's chin though. "You sure?"

"Well," Steve hazards, remembering, starkly, Peggy's reactions to him 'defending her honor'. Not like Peggy had ever really needed him to do so but, well, old habits die hard. "If you're okay with that?"

Tamika gawks at him. "Why wouldn't I want _you_ defending my honor?"

There's a slight discomfort at the words, him instinctively connecting the respectful-you to Captain America. It doesn't take him long to remember her words earlier though. The discomfort disappears. The awkwardness doesn't. Fidgeting was alright when he had gangly limbs; all beefed up, he just looks like a clown.

"Some ladies don't need me to. May have noticed that you certainly don't _need_ me to, either, if how you chewed that guy out is any indicator."

Tamika blinks. "He was being a real egg is all." She says without a hint of remorse. The way she says 'egg' amuses Steve. The way she says her 'e's in general amused Steve, actually, but the word 'egg' was especially rich with her accent. He'd have to clue out ways to get her to say the word more often.

"I'd still like you to defend my honor though. 'D be nice, I think."

Steve almost jokingly asks, _what, didn't have a guy defend your honor before?_ but somehow manages not to fuck this interaction up, because he knows she's never had it, and it wouldn't do to try and pull a laugh out of that hat. Instead, he twists the conversation around and goes, "Listen, about the collar..."

Tamika's body locks up and releases all in the same breath. She glances at Sam, respectfully silent, before glancing away from the both of them entirely. Her voice is all too casual as she says, "Don't worry about it."

"Why not? It was uncalled for. We had no right treating you like that."

She looks at him a little surprised, before raising her eyebrows. Her eyes are annoyingly perceptive, reminds him startlingly of Nat's, actually, for this weird brief moment. She sounds way too-knowing when she says, "You're feeling guilty about it, aren't you?"

Sam snorts. "Not a damn thing in the world that Steve _doesn't_ feel personally responsible for, Tam."

"Shut up, Sam."

"Just calling it how it is, Rogers."

"You don't _have to_. You have no right to those feelings, honestly." Tamika cuts in, sounding a bit desperate to get it cleared up. Her words silence Steve up well enough, that's for certain. She tugs on the hem of her waist-length jacket and huffs. "I know you and SHIELD aren—"

"There is no SHIELD."

"— _you and_ _SHIELD_ aren't the same person. They don't make decisions on your behalf, and you don't work under or for them. What they do to me isn't the same as you doing it to me. It's not like _you_ ordered the collar to be put on me." She frowns at him then, rearing back slightly in that way she does when she's considering unpleasant things, "... right?"

"Nah, he didn't. Steve's not that kinda guy." Sam jumps to his defense instantly. Steve must have done something good to get the friendship of a guy like Wilson, honestly. He's not sure he deserves it.

Tamika's staring at Sam like she's thinking the same thing he is.

Maybe they have a lot more in common than their shared anger. Steve is actually excited at the thought. His new friends won't ever replace the ones he left behind after he nosedived, but he won't turn away the connections, not if they stop him from sinking into that dark place again. Peggy'd sock him in the jaw for even thinking like that. _Always so melodramatic._

"I wouldn't ever," Steve assures her, since she looks like she wants to believe Sam but is having trouble going all the way. "I promised you when you first came in that weren't like HYDRA, didn't I? I intend to follow through with that 'til the end."

Tamika sighs in relief. "Ah, that's nice." She murmurs to herself, before nodding at something in her head. She grins up at him with all of her teeth, something Steve knows she's only just started trusting herself to do, and rubbed the back of her neck. "If you're back that means Wanda's hanging around too, yes?"

Well, that's to be expected. "She should be in the rec room with Vision."

Just like that, Tamika's entire face darkens. Sam smirks and nudges her with his elbow. "Still don't like him, huh?"

"I don't get why it's _always around her!_ " Tamika whispers harshly, more of a hiss than anything. "It's a synthezoid! It isn't worthy!"

"Re-word that." Sam says mildly.

Tamika does. "It isn't good enough for her!" Sam nods in approval. "I think I need to go." She says, patting Sam's arm and then, hesitatingly, Steve's. "I'll, um, talk to you guys later. Maybe. I don't — " Looking a bit pained with herself, Tamika haltingly bites out an awkward, "Bye!" and storms off. Presumably to throw herself between Vision and Wanda and camp there for the evening.

Sam watches her go with a fond look on his face. "I love that kid," He says to the air before turning to Steve. More fiercely, he says, "You hear? _I love that kid._ "

"Well," Steve drawls, sacrificing specificity for the opportunity to draw a smile out of Sam, "She's _alright,_ I guess."

It works. Sam smiles. " _You guess?_ "

"I mean, _I suppose so._ She's not _terrible company._ "

"Coming from the guy who's company consists of a Norse god and a literal green Hagrid, that's high praise, right?"

"There's also the two master assassins."

"And let's not forget the billionaire playboy philanthropist."

" _Riiight,_ how could I forget that one?"

"Salty, Rogers. Like the goddamn Dead Sea up in here."

"You can leave now, Wilson."

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...

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 **31.08.16 | EDIT:** Added another section to the paragraph from Steve's point of view.

 **1.09.16 | EDIT:** Added a diary entry detailing Tamika's thoughts.

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Authors Note:

Drabble for the Right Through Me 'verse. I missed Tamika. I like my anxious-depressed-pacifist OC, okay? She's precious. I couldn't resist the opportunity of her straightening her back and saying 'fuck you' to Stark-flavored arrogance, I really couldn't. Notice Tamika and Sam's relationship. They sit together in the rec room and roll their eyes at everyone when they're being especially white. 'Why don't they use their spices, Sam? Why do they hate their taste buds? Where's the seasoning? The flavor?' 'I don't know, kid. I just don't know.'

Some of y'all have probably noticed the different layout of this chapter. That's because I have a new favorite author by the name of **XxZuiliu** and their stories are so beautiful and poetically written and _neat._ I didn't realize how much impact the way you broke up your story had on it's quality until I was introduced to their masterpieces. My god, I could go on forever about them.

Still don't know when I'll shove Tamika into Civil War, but feel free to barrage me with ideas about that one. Her team's pretty obvious at this point. Still, opinions! Love them!

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	3. 02 walk away with victory

**Title:** Right Through Me

 **Summary:** When most of your life is spent living in the background, it can be a it intimidating to be thrust to the forefronts of a dramatic narrative. Luckily, Tamika Maihi is a self-insert, so you can trust her to always recover from a tragic backstory. — SI, gen.

 **Rating:** M

 **Words:** 22,900

 **Disclaimer:** Disclaimed

 **Warnings:** Mentions of past torture, sickness, forced feeding, general depressing themes, ask me to tag. (This is honestly a v boring chapter.)

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02.

 **Right Through Me**

 _walk away with victory_

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A hand pries loose the wooden spoon in her hand. Taking the hint, she leans back and let Sam bring the sauce to his mouth. She watches as he hums and smacks his lips together, looking altogether more thoughtful that she's sure the situation requires.

Tamika nudges his ribs with her pointer finger. "How is it?"

Sam makes a drawn out humming sound. Then, apparently feeling gracious, he says, "Well, it ain't nearly as terrible as I was expecting." Tamika huffs. Sam grins cheekily at her and hands her back the spoon. "Joking. Kind of. Sauce really _is_ better than I was expecting from you."

He leaves her personal space to go back to mixing the meatballs. Tamika wrinkles her nose at his back and stirs the sauce. "Should I just leave it here to simmer?"

"Nah. It's good, but it still needs something more. Any bay leaves there?"

"Uh…" Tamika reaches up and throws open the spice cupboard. She fiddles around with a few little bottles, squinting at the labels. She comes across a lot of the hot spices that Wanda enjoys and an overabundance of basil leaves that Tamika isn't sure who to blame for, but no bay leaves... "No, I can't find any—oh never mind, I found it! How much should I put in?"

"Just a couple. Sauce doesn't need all that much and Clint won't touch the damn dish if he sees how much green is in it. Fucking child."

Tamika snorts at that and shakes out a few leaves into the sauce, capping the container and putting it to the side. She gently mixes the sauce before bringing the spoon to her mouth. She smiles at the taste, proud of herself. "It's pretty nice."

Sam barks a laugh at her. She can hear the wet squelch of him rolling the meat into a ball shape. "I'll tell my momma you approve."

"I'll tell her myself!"

"Oho, I'm sure you will, Miss Social Anxiety. In the meantime, could you hand me a towel?" Tamika points to the one hanging off the oven. Sam nods and gestures with his hand. "Yeah, that one. Can you see any others? Of course it's that one."

Tamika whips the tea towel from the oven and throws it at the back of Sam's head. "No need for the _attitude._ "

She can't see it but she gets the feeling Sam is rolling his eyes at her. She can hear it in his tone. "You focus on your sauce, okay?" Loudly and pointedly huffing, Tamika does exactly that. She tends to her sauce and the makes sure the pasta in the pot on the other element doesn't stick to the bottom or sides. Sam is humming along to the song coming through the speakers.

Tamika suddenly realizes that she recognizes the song playing. She looks up at the ceiling in pleasant surprise. "Sam?"

"Yo?"

"Is this Jimmy Cliff?"

"You know it is, girl. You heard this song before?"

"Yeah," Tamika swallows. "It was my mum's favourite song. Actually, it was the only song she had on her phone."

"What, just this one? Nothing else?" Tamika shakes her head. Sam snorts and places a freshly rolled meatball to the side. "My aunt does the exact same thing. The only song she has on her iPod is 'Let's Get It On' by Marvin Gaye and that's it. That's all there is. Offered to put more on it and she looked like she was going to smack me over the head. Never offered again."

She chokes out a delicate laugh. "How do they not get sick of the one song?"

"Passion. Dedication. I don't know, my phone has nine hundred songs on it and I still press 'next' when it's on shuffle." She looks over her shoulder to see Sam grinning at her. "I'm a fussy listener." He tells her conspiratorially. "It pisses my cousins off. I'm not allowed to be in charge of music anymore because I can never pick a song and stick with it 'till the end. Drove my sister crazy."

"My brother is like that." Tamika finds herself telling him, sounding like the words were ripped from her. She's hesitant to continue speaking, but she's already turned her back to the stove, and Sam has put aside the meat to look at her as well. He's waiting for something. Resolving to not leave him hanging, she continues, "The second oldest one, Liam: I've told you about him, haven't I?"

"The rugby one? Yeah, you've mentioned him."

Tamika nods. Pauses. Nods again, longer this time. "He can't listen to a song all the way through either — or he couldn't, last time I saw him. He thinks songs tend to drag on, or get boring halfway through, or something like that. We hate letting him sit in the front seat because he spends the entire ride flicking through stations without settling on one. Not that he'd ever admit to doing that, of course, but it was kind of an unspoken rule to do everything you could to keep Liam from sitting somewhere he could control the music."

"Sounds like a nice kid," Sam says, eyebrows raised and a funny little half-smile on his face.

Tamika smiles back thinly. She fiddles with the hem of her cream sweater and swallows a couple more times than her throat can handle. She shrugs, non-committal. "Liam's always been a nice guy. Bit slow, though. Always been like that, I think, but he makes up for it."

"With the sports?"

"With _maths,_ actually. Numbers just make sense to him." There's a stone in her throat all of a sudden. Tamika coughs to clear it. Sniffs. Looks away from Sam and his attentive gaze and stares out the reinforced glass windows, out at the glade that surrounded the facility. "Anyway… there was only one song he didn't skip, one that he'd always let play from beginning to end. He would practically play it every day — God, I hated it."

"I feel the same way about Rick Astley." Sam says sagely. Tamika snorts against her will. Thoughtfully, Sam adds, "And Justin Bieber."

"Aww, you're kidding. Bieber is my man!"

"Don't even kid about that, Tam." Sam points at her, a severe scowl on his face. "Don't _even._ I'll disown you. We won't have that kid mentioned in this kitchen, or any time in my presence."

Tamika grins at him and raises her hands in surrender. "If you're so adamant about it…"

"I _am_."

"… then I guess I don't have a choice. What about merch? Can I keep my posters?"

"Nope."

"Shirts?"

"Hard pass."

"What about my limited edition Bieber socks? Can I keep them?"

"They're putting that guys face on _feet_ these days? Is _nothing_ sacred? What's next, he'll get his own brand of cereal?"

"Oh, you didn't hear…?" Sam's face morphed in horror before it flattened out and he glared at her, clearly catching onto her bluff. Tamika grins unrepentantly. "I'm kidding, of course. I have better taste than that."

Sam rolls his eyes. "I sure as hell hope so." He gives her a warning look anyway. Seeing as Tamika did just buy his new album, she figures that's fair. "What was the song anyway?"

Tamika entertains pretending she doesn't know what he's talking about. She doesn't entertain the idea for very long. She gnaws at her bottom lip for a moment, then tells him, "I haven't heard it in a while but I'm pretty sure it was that, uh, that one Al Green song."

"'Let's Stay Together'?"

"Maybe? What does it sound like?"

Sam tips his head back and hollers to the ceiling, "Hey, FRIDAY! You around?"

"Yes I am, Mr Wilson. Do you need something?"

"Think you could put on 'Let's Stay Together' for Tam over here?"

"The 1972 song performed by Al Green, sir?"

"That's the one."

"I think I can do that." And true to her word, not a second later, FRIDAY had the song playing from the surround sound speakers. "Is that to your satisfaction, sir and miss?"

Sam shrugs and turns back to Tamika. "Well? Is it?"

Tamika doesn't need to listen to the song for a second longer for her to come to a conclusion. She shakes her head. "Not this one. Sorry, FRIDAY."

"It's quite alright, Miss Maihi." The AI doesn't sound like it's bothered. Granted, it's a robot and doesn't have feelings, but Tamika's heard tales of JARVIS' near-human capability for emotion and truthfully, she's of the opinion that you can never be too safe when it comes to self-aware artificial intelligence. "Might I suggest another popular Al Green song?"

Sam crosses his arms and nods, settling comfortably against the bench. "If you don't mind. Thanks, Fri."

"My pleasure." Says FRIDAY, and then—

 _I can think of younger days when to live for my life_

 _Was everything a man could want to do_

 _I could never see tomorrow_

And then—

And then Tamika is laying across the backseat, lulled by the deep murmur of her mother's Toyota engine.

There is a sliver of light in the sky as she pillows her head on the petrol-scented woolen coat she found lying under the driver's seat. Now and then, they pass through a town, and light dances across the action figures jammed into door pockets. Through half-lidded eyes, she can see Erik wrapped in an ugly plaid bush shirt, drooling on Willmarr's pajama-clad lap. Street lights streak through the night sky like orange meteors; in the driver's seat her father lights a cigarette. _Good_ , she thinks tiredly. The smoke is better than the plastic stench of the car.

A horrible sadness churns in Tamika's stomach. She opens eyes that she didn't realize she'd closed and blinks frantically, ashamed of herself from being driven to tears so easily. She tells Sam that this is it, this is the song, and the longing in her voice nearly undoes her completely.

There is a hand on her shoulder that can only be Sam's. Still, for a quick, sharp moment, Tamika believes with unshakable certainty that it isn't him — that it's Liam, shaking her awake at 3 AM and grumbling about how she needs to turn off the TV if she's going to sleep in the living room, or Willmarr, catching her by the shoulder when she trips over a bump in the carpet, laughing about her two left feet.

But it isn't them. It's Sam. She knows it's Sam, of course she does, but for a moment…

Well, the moment is over.

Sam asks her, "You alright there?"

She says again, "This is the song. This is his song."

"Your brother has good taste in music."

Tamika makes a sound that could pass as laughter and shakes her head. "God, no, not Liam. Liam has the worst damn taste in music you'll ever encounter. He loves Justin Bieber. Shamelessly devoted to the dude." Or he had been.

"Can't trust anyone these days." Sam says mournfully. Tamika puts on her best smile for him and looks up to meet his eyes. Sam is close, and concerned, but trying to hide it behind a crooked, gap-toothed grin. Lower, as if someone is listening in and he's trying to save her the embarrassment, he asks, "You okay?"

Tamika nods her head immediately, nudging him back gently. "Fine. I'm fine. Sorry, got a bit… nostalgic for a bit. It's done. I'm over it." Sam doesn't look convinced but steps back from her regardless, respecting her desire for control. "Can we… do you think we could change the song?"

Sam doesn't miss a beat. He turns his head up to FRIDAY like he always does, as if he's talking to a person stuck in the ceiling and not a collection of code and programming running through the wires of the house. "Could you put on some Ray Charles for us, FRI?"

"Certainly, Mr Wilson." 'Georgia on My Mind' starts playing immediately, warm and inviting and not doing anything to help Tamika's homesickness, but doing enough to keep her from bursting into tears. She appreciates the effort. "Is that all?"

"Yeah, FRIDAY," Tamika says before Sam can. "Thanks."

"You're welcome." Says the AI and then doesn't say anything else.

Sam sways along to the song before nodding to himself. "Turn the sauce to simmer, Tam." Tamika does so without complaining, though she's pretty confused. "We're going to dance."

Tamika's eyes bug out. "… Dance?" Sam nods calmly. "Like, right now? Here?"

"Yyyy _yup_. To this song and everything. With our feet _,_ even, could you believe it?" He wipes his hands thoroughly using the dish towel she gave him a little bit ago. He then clears his throat theatrically and extends his hand to Tamika. "Wanna dance… or nah?"

Tamika hesitates. "I… can't dance, Sam."

"So what? Neither can I. We'll humiliate ourselves as a team. It's be nice, come on, let's go. I'll even show you a few steps."

"But I'm really, really bad at dancing. Like, seriously bad. I don't think you understand just how bad,"

"Uhh, I think I do. I'm not exactly Kevin Bacon myself." Tamika crinkles her nose up, Sam makes a guttural groaning sound that reminds Tamika keenly of Erik. "Come _on._ Just take my hand already." Sam twinkles his fingers. "Besides, dancing isn't about _looking_ good, it's about _feeling_ good. You could use that."

Well, there's no arguing with that. Tamika tentatively places her hand in Sam's calloused ones, squeaking when he sweeps her up and around the counter so they're in the empty space between the cooking area and the dining area. When he twirls her, Tamika's afraid she'll spin and spin and spin all the way out the window. Sam's grip on her hand is firm, however, and she jerks to a stop and twirls back into his personal space like a six-foot yoyo.

She shrieks in his face for that. "YOU CAN'T JUST SPIN SOMEONE WITHOUT WARNING THEM, SAM!"

"Christ, you have a voice like a banshee." Says Sam, rocking her back and forth. They step left and right and left and right, simply bouncing between their feet. "It was nice and spontaneous though, wasn't it? Don't tell me it wasn't cool. I know it was cool."

"I thought I was going to go through the window."

"As someone who regularly flies through windows, I can confirm that it's a cool feeling. See? I know what I'm doing."

"You're an _asshole._ "

"And _you,_ Tammy-Tam, need to know when to sit down and let people do nice things for you." Sam parries, turning them in a circle. Tamika scowls at him and considers phasing through him completely to escape the situation. "This is a good song to dance to anyway. Riley used to—" He stops.

Tamika blinks down at him. "What about Riley?"

Lightly, like he's afraid of stepping on a landmine, Sam finishes what he was about to say. "Riley and I used to dance to this song all the time."

Tamika tilts her head. "Riley could dance?"

One of his eyebrows tick up against his will. "Yeah, he knew his way around the dance floor. He grew up with his grandparents, and they were hardcore swing dancers back in the day. Still got it now, and they're knocking on nineties with arthritis in both knees. They taught him everything."

"And he taught you?"

Sam snorts, a fond little smile on his face. "Well, he certainly _tried._ I'm better in the air though, so it didn't work out too well. I think I permanently fractured a few bones in his toes from all the times I stepped on them."

Tamika tries to smile comfortingly at him. "He sounds like a good man, Samwise."

Sam's eyes go a bit distant. "He was the best." He says softly. Tamika allows him this moment, content with bouncing on her feet and moving in a circle. Then, Sam says, "How do you feel about dips, Tam?" and then proceeds to dip her without waiting for a response. She screams, and pounds on his chest when he pulls her back into a vertical position, and pretends not to notice that his laugh is weak and strained.

It's the least she can do.

.

* * *

.

Tamika dreams that she is small again. She is holding onto the back of a green plaid shirt, stepping through thick mud in her pink gumboots. She's holding a hand somehow smaller than her own, readjusting her grip every few seconds because the hand she is holding is very, very sweaty. She knows that it is because they are nervous. She can't remember why, only that they are.

( _It's the mud,_ a voice whispers in the distance, past the trees and deep in the bush, _He thinks he'll sink into the mud and then keep on sinking until the earth has swallowed him whole. He's been watching too many Indiana Jones movies._ )

The owner of the green shirt says something that she can't recall in her waking moments. Another voice, belonging to a boy with an oval face and green eyes like hers, giggles and whispers back. She grins at the two boys, and says something that has all of them laughing. She is so proud of herself. Plaid-shirt speaks, clearly imitating someone, and then Green-eyes picks up his slack, and she's laughing so hard her stomach feels like it's twisting itself into knots. It's only as Sweaty-hand joins in that a voice from the front of the pack snaps something that cuts through the humour like a hunting knife, and they're all quiet for a long, stilted moment—

And then the voice joins in on the joke, and all of the children and giggling, innocent happiness filling them up until it is practically pouring out of their ears, and Tamika—

She can only think of how painfully happy she is to be where she is in that exact moment that when she wakes up in a grey-painted metal room, six foot tall and alone, that she can do nothing to stop the tears.

Is it possible to be homesick for a home you aren't sure you ever actually had?

.

* * *

.

"You look tired. Did you not sleep well last night?" Wanda's hand is warm on Tamika's cheek. "Another nightmare?"

Tamika shrugs and covers Wanda's hand with her own. "Something like that." She doesn't know how else to explain it.

"Should I move back into the room?" Wanda's eyes are alight with concern. Tamika is struck again with the realization that she is lucky to have a sister like Wanda. So kind and beautiful, and all of that attention and care is focused on Tamika. She feels unprepared and ungrateful and unworthy and every word beginning with -un, all at once. "You did not have so many nightmares when I was there with you."

Tamika shakes her head. "No. _No_ , Wanda, you're… you should have your own room. I'm too old to need to sleep in the company of my big sister. It's embarrassing."

There is something sad in Wanda's eyes. She takes her hand back. "Not embarrassing." She says simply. "I don't mind sharing a bed with you. My own bed feels too big most nights."

"Still. I'm fine on my own." Tamika reassures, playing with the end of her sweater. She can't imagine anything worse than coming off as a child in a facility like this one, in the company that she keeps. She isn't some helpless little girl anymore, and she wants everyone to be aware of that. Adults don't sleep with their big sisters to keep the nightmares away. "Thank you, though. For offering."

"It's… fine. The offer is always open, of course. You know that, right?"

"Yeah, I know." Tamika smiles, hoping to lessen the concern in Wanda's eyes. She bites her tongue to fend off a yawn. "How's the Avenger'ing going?"

"I think the proper term would be 'Avenging'." Wanda corrects. "And it is going as well as can be expected, though I keep making the secondary mistake of forgetting situational awareness."

"What's the first mistake?"

Wanda raises her eyebrow and says, dryly, "Thinking that this job would be easy."

Tamika grins, a sudden and short flash of white teeth, and grabs Wanda's hand on her lap. It's still strange, to be allowed to touch someone so freely, but Wanda's desensitizing her to it quickly. Tamika barely even flinches anymore. "You'll get it. You can move things with your mind, that gives you an edge over most enemies."

Wanda smooths her thumb over Tamika's knuckles, always so casually affectionate, and smiles softly. "I hope so." It is said softly: distractedly. Tamika thinks she knows what Wanda is thinking about, and her own hand convulses against her will. Wanda looks away from the window and to Tamika in question.

Tamika smiles thinly and shakes her head. "Nothing." She mumbles. "Sorry, I didn't ask… how have your nightmares been? Are you… are they still… have you been sleeping well?"

Wanda almost looks surprised to be asked. "I'm dealing with them better these days." She answers cryptically. "Vis does not need sleep and is always awake should I desperately need company on the particularly bad nights."

It takes a great deal of effort not to let her discomfort show on her face. Tamika's sure Wanda notices anyway. Turning away to collect herself, Tamika plays with her bottom lip, trying to gather the right words for what she wants to ask. Wanda waits; patient.

The teenager asks, "And what about the unparticular bad nights?"

Wanda smiles again and replies: "Unparticular isn't a word."

Tamika blushes. "You know what I meant." She murmurs.

Wanda nods, a little glint in her eyes. "I do."

She does not say anything more than that, despite Tamika's curiosity. Tamika takes the silence as an answer. Her fingers twitch again. This time, Wanda tightens her grip without looking away from the view. It feels like a dismissal just as much as a reassurance.

Cold comforts come in abundance, these days.

.

* * *

.

"269 Mount Fyffe Road."

Tamika looks up from her homework at Tony's sudden voice. He's sipping from his thick leafy-looking shake, still playing around with some holograms that Tamika doesn't even try to comprehend. Trying to understand them usually gives her a headache. Numbers and equations aren't her strengths.

She stares at him, hoping for elaboration, but apart from the pointed way he spoke, he goes about his business and gives her no real indication that he was talking to her in the first place. Tamika's mechanical pencil remains poised over her notebook, waiting for him to continue that thought. Tony swipes his hand and dismisses a 3D-model of… something… that had a lot of clockwork in it.

He doesn't even look at her.

 _Okay,_ Tamika thinks, and goes back to her book report. They work in a comfortable silence, getting along much better when they aren't talking. Tamika, for her part, is quietly thrilled with the homework. It has been a long time since she's been allowed to learn, so she never groans about homework in class or procrastinates assignments. It's a novelty: learning. She hasn't taken it for granted for a very long time.

Unless it's calculus. Tamika always falls asleep during calculus.

Tony mumbles things to himself a lot when he works. It's nice background noise and primarily why Tamika sucks it up and sits with him to do her homework.

(He apologises to her, after she's released and he finally reads the email about Darren Cross. Not with words — Tony doesn't apologise with _words,_ at least not to her — but with a library of educational and recreational books alike that she has never read. A week after the library he showcases a sleek black staff that runs an electricity current throughout and matching gloves to protect her from said electricity current. _They detach here,_ he explains to her, pressing on a notch that turns her long staff into two half-staffs, _so you can kick ass double-time, if need be._ )

((She forgives him, of course, because it's hard not to forgive the guy who pulled five all-nighters working out the perfect non-lethal weapon for her, but Tamika's never been good at forgetting. Call it a personal flaw.))

Tamika is in the middle of her third paragraph when Tony speaks up again. "269 Mount Fyffe Road." He says. Tamika looks up from her homework distractedly, not really expecting him to finish that thought. She's wrong. "That's in — what is that, how do you say that — _Kai-koo-ra?_ Did I say that right?"

Tamika's back straightens out of its hunch. She narrows her eyes. "Kaikoura?" She wrinkles her nose. "What about it?"

"Ah, I completely butchered the pronunciation, didn't I? Not my fault. I was reading some other city names and they are _complicated_ — like, how do you say this one? Can you tell me?" Tony brings up something, a word, and projects it, then turns it so Tamika can read it.

Her eyebrows hitch up. "Te Teko?"

Tony snaps his fingers. "Right, short 'e' instead of a long 'e'. I was saying it like 't _ee_ teck- _oh_ ' in my head. Glad I didn't say it out loud. What about this one?"

"Tauranga."

"Hmm." Tony nods as if in approval of the sound. "I like it. Do you speak Māori?" Tamika blinks. "Don't suppose you could teach me? You never know when you'll need to use other languages in this business. Or do you not know it? No judgement, a lot of shit happened to you when you were young, I wouldn't blame you if you weren't fluent."

A corner of her mouth twitches. "I'm fluent." She assures him, placing her pencil down and twisting her body to face him. "Why the sudden interest in New Zealand cities?"

"I was looking into something there. Something meaning 'someone' and 'someone' meaning _you._ " This is a surprise. Tony does some fancy finger thing in mid-air and brings up a farmhouse that rings absolutely no bells. It's a nice house, Tamika thinks: familiar, in the aura that it gives off. Almost… homely? Tamika thinks that she wouldn't mind living there. "Do you know where Mount Fyffe is?"

"Uh, yeah, I think so. Kaikoura, right? It's… this big town near where I used to live, actually. Ra—"

"Rahn-ee-ora, right?"

"Rangiora. Roll your 'r's." Tamika corrects. "How do you know that?"

Tony instantly replies, "Don't be mad."

An inherently contradictory part of Tamika immediately becomes mad. " _Tony._ "

Tony raises his hands in surrender. "Seriously, please don't be mad, that's just going to start a chain reaction around the house that'll make me Public Enemy Number One in here, starting from your sister and Wilson and Rogers, who'll rope Romanoff into it, and with her comes Barton, and Vision's following Maximoff everywhere these days so that's 99% of the New Avengers against me. Rhodey, of course, will be on my side and he's with the military so by proxy I'll have the army on my side and I think, between my intelligence, creative genius, suits and charisma and Rhodey's big guns, we'll win against your team. FYI."

"What—" Tamika shakes her head. "Whatever, I don't care. Why shouldn't I be mad?"

Tony brings up the photo of the farm house, throws it in front of her face, and plainly says: "That's your family."

All functions freeze inside her head.

Tony continues on blithely: "Well, not your family _literally_ as in _your family have been turned into a hideous farm house in the middle of nowhere_. That's just where they've moved themselves. Been there for two years now, settled there in the beginning of June. Your mom was in debt since she loaned a lot of money to make the down payment for the house but don't worry about it, I've already paid it off. Now she can stop working so hard and relax with her kids — _your_ brothers, by the by — for a weekend or two since I _also_ paid off her mortgage, but she won't find that out until Saturday when the notice comes in the mail. I know what you're thinking: _Tony, what about their school fees?_ WELL—"

"You paid off my mum's mortgage?" Tamika sounds strangled, her eyes frozen on the holographic farm house. "And their school fees?"

"Willmarr's tuition wasn't even a _dent_ to my bank account, girly." Tony says, blinking. "Anyway, as I was saying—"

"Willmarr's at _uni?_ "

Tony seems to mentally grind to a halt, staring at Tamika with something she's never seen before in his eyes. He grins, a bit uncomfortably and lopsided but very, _very_ kindly, and says, "Yeah, sure is. Computer science. He's changed his major a few times but his grades are telling me this is the field of study he'll stick to. Seriously, your older brother has a knack for computers. Not as good as I was at his age but you'll be hard pressed to find someone like me. I'll have to think about hiring him if he keeps it up, if he _doesn't_ have a job lined up for him already. Not that competition is an _actual concern_ for me but, you know, _courtesy_."

"And Liam? What about Liam?"

"Under 20s Warriors."

Tamika's breath stutters in her chest. Her mouth is suddenly dry. Sports, she thinks, He's still playing sports, just like she had hoped for. She's suddenly desperate for _more._ "Erik? How is he?"

" _Quite_ the troublemaker according to his school report cards. He's been getting straight A's in art and music since elementary, and it seems he's keeping the streak going in high school."

"What about my mum? Is she doing anything different?"

"Still working for the same transport company as she has been since 1995. She's been promoted twice since 2011." And with that news delivered, Tamika felt all that desperation rising in her throat die a quick, brutal death. She slumps over the table with her trembling hands knotted in her hair. Air — air is a novelty. She tries to, to remind herself, _this is how you breathe,_ but her lungs aren't cooperating. Nothing is cooperating. She can't, she doesn't even know what's wrong, why she can't, can't _do this,_ why she's being all pathetic again, but it—

(They're doing so well, her family. Her mum moved the entire family, got promoted, Erik found a passion in art, Willmarr's in uni, Liam's going pro, they're all doing so — so well and maybe — maybe it's horrible and she's a bad person and her time with Strucker has twisted her up inside more than she has realized because she can't even feel _happy._ She isn't _proud._ She's _miserable, have they forgotten her, was she poison, toxic to their growth, the rotten branch that stunts the tree—_ )

"Oh, crap." Tony murmurs. He's underwater. Tamika can't hear him at all.

The grey, she thinks. The grey. You need to go back to the grey, you need to stop this from hurting so much.

Sam told you not to, she reminds herself. He told you to stop doing that because it doesn't help you.

Who gives a shit what Sam said, your body is tearing itself up from the inside and you don't have a damn way to stop your sternum from collapsing in on itself like a crumbling building—

"…come on, kid, breathe. In and out, just like that. Stay with me. Can you feel that?" — _ba-dump, ba-dump, ba-dump_ —"That, my friend, is a heartbeat — well actually it's a mechanical heart that I keep around to mimic a heartbeat since mine's all, you know, _metal_ but this fake heart is a lot more stable than an actual heartbeat so — _yes,_ FRIDAY, thanks for that _very unnecessary_ comment _._ It isn't like _you_ could do any better, you don't _have_ any anxiety attack protocols yet! It isn't like this is eas — heeeyyy, your pupils have dilated again, that's good, that means you're listening to me. There you are! Maihi, can you hear me? Are you listening? Follow to my breathing, alright kiddo? You'll be alright. You're safe here. This is literally the safest place on Earth right now, there is no conceivable way you could be in danger."

Tamika holds her breath and clenches her fist around the mechanical heart pumping in her hands. She exhales lowly, and then sucks in another deep breath, holding it.

Tony rocks back and plops himself down. "You're handling this like a pro, Tamika, you don't even need me here." Tamika shakes her head. "You _do_ need me here? Thanks for the self-esteem boost. It's always nice to know you're needed. You good? Breathing normally? How's your heartbeat?"

Tamika works past the cottonmouth to croak: "F-Fine."

Tony waggles his eyebrows. "What did I tell you, huh? Mechanical heart. Works every time."

"You… you get a lot of… of anxiety attacks?" Tamika means for it to be a joke.

The way the mirth sudden wipes off Tony's face means she's missed the mark on that comedy front. His mouth is oddly flat as he replies, "Yup." Tamika swallows, guilty about asking. Tony extends his hand and wiggles his fingers. "Can I have my heart back?"

Tamika gives him the heart back. "Proof." She tells him, dropping the metal organ in his waiting palm.

"Proof? Proof of wha — oh. Is that — does every woman in my life think they _have_ to make a joke about the prosthetic heart? Granted, Pepper's the only one who has ever said it, and it isn't like Romanoff or your sister have, but I think two for two is still freaky odds for the same unamusing joke."

"Wasn't a joke."

Tony looks a bit startled at that. "… Oh. That's a bit… hm. You know I'm a bit too old for you, right?"

Tamika isn't even surprised. She rolls her eyes, going from grateful to 'get-away-from-me' in the time it takes for the sunlight to reach the earth. Tony grins, evidently pleased to have changed the atmosphere, and stands out of his crouch. His joints crack and Tony's face winces with them.

"Let's not mention the age thing. It's a sensitive topic." Tony says in an aside to her before stretching out his arms. "Honestly though, I need you to answer. Are you okay? Out of crippling anxiety territory?"

"I think so?"

"Good enough for me." Tony says, waddling over to his workbench and throwing himself into the rollie chair. He spins around once before settling his feet on the table, reclining comfortably. "Was it the family? Should we veto all talk of family? I'm one hundred percent okay with that decision, by the way."

"I, uh, no, it's… it's okay. I don't mind — I mean, it's just… been a while since I've ever really… I don't know. I don't know. I've been really homesick lately, I think, and…" She sounded like an idiot. "I should… I should thank you." Tamika takes another deep breath. "For… for doing that for them. Me. Whoever. You didn't have to."

"Sure I did. We're a team now, right? Team is family. Which means your family is also my family. Distantly related. Your mother is my twice removed cousin, your grandparents are my great-great-grandparents, etcetera etcetera."

"What?"

"Ignore everything I just said." Tony leans back in his chair and grins. "Don't sweat it, kid. I have a lot of money, I can afford to throw it around."

"…Okay. Thanks." Tamika wipes at her face with the sleeves of her shirt and sniffles. "Do you mind if we… don't mention the whole panic attack thing?"

Tony raises his eyebrows. "Like, ever?"

"Like, ever."

His entire body seems to sag in relief. "Oh, thank _God_. I was really worried you would want to talk about it. I am so very okay with never mentioning this ever again and going back to our respective homework in silence. I _was_ going to ask if you were interested in visiting your family again but obviously, that's not going to fly, you are in no way prepared for that emotional shit storm. No judgement, we can wait."

Tamika swallows past the lump in her throat and shakes her head a fraction too desperately to be healthy. "No. No, no, no. I'd really rather not."

"… Can I ask why?" Tony presses, seeming genuinely curious in a nice detached scientific way.

"I'm not ready." She tells Tony, because Tony honestly deserves this much, if not more and everything Tamika has to offer. "I'm not… I'm too… They're doing better without me. I want to… to be better before I smash in and…"

"And ruin everything?" Tony guesses. Tamika nods. Tony nods. "Personal opinion? I think you're deluded if you think you'll ruin their happiness, kid, but I reckon that's your business. Far be it from me to judge someone for having a, hm, wonky perception of their own self-worth."

Tamika rears back in surprise. "D-Deluded?"

"Yyyyup, that's the one. Or seriously insecure. HYDRA really messed your self-esteem up, didn't it?"

"They messed me up. Period."

"Nah they didn't," Tony waves his hand. "You're fine."

Tamika's… strangely comforted by that.

Just a bit.

"I am?"

"Yeah, kid. Bit messed up in the head but after what happened to you but you could handle your trauma a _lot_ worse. Trust me on that front." Tony gestures around him elaborately, at the immaculate suits behind presentation glasses set into the walls around them. "So, yeah, when I say you're alright, you're alright. Hold that with both hands and run with it."

Forget about ' _just a bit'_.

"…Thanks, Tony."

"Don't mention it. Seriously."

.

* * *

.

Whenever the New Avengers do exceptionally during training, Rhodey takes them out for dinner. The only rule for the outings was that no "old" Avengers were allowed to come, which had made Steve laugh alongside a smug Sam, Tony whine, and Wanda smile.

"Tamika isn't an original Avenger," She'd said, pleased, "Should I tell her to get ready?"

"As long as she doesn't take too long, sure,"

Which was about the only explanation for why Tamika was sitting between Sam and Rhodey at some seafood restaurant she didn't know the name of. Rhodey was controlling the conversation with help from Sam, being the only two with anything remotely resembling charisma; most of Sam's energy was going into coaching laughs from Tamika and witty remarks from Wanda, while Rhodey attempted to enlighten Vision to millennial humour and general puns.

("They're _terrible_ ," was the line Rhodey had started the conversation with, "but they're essential, especially if you ever wanna get on Tony's nerves. He hates them. Apparently, they aren't intellectual enough for him, which is exactly why you need to become the freaking master with them, okay, Vis?")

It was a bit awkward at times, but Tamika found that enjoyed the outings. The pause.

"I have access to every morsel of information on the internet, Mr Rhodes, I assure you that I know the definition of 'pun'—"

" _Knowing_ and _executing_ are completely different things, okay? Trust me on this, Mr Robot, I would know. I've been friends with Tony since college. There is a difference. So, revision: if I were to say, _what's medicine does Dracula take when he's sick?_ You would reply—"

"Mr Rhodes, this isn't necessary…"

"Vision, if you don't take this seriously, I will be forced to kick your ass. Not even joking. Now. If I were to say, _what medicine does—_ "

"I'm not really sure…"

"— _WHAT MEDICINE—_ "

"I don't—"

"— _DOES DRACULA TAKE—_ "

"Mr—"

"Just go with it, Vis."

"— _WHEN HE IS SICK?_ "

"…Co—"

"No offense, Tamika, but if you interrupt I will be forced to kick _your_ ass as well, and I don't want to do that. You shouldn't impinge on Vision's educational opportunities either. That's rude."

"Uh, okay. Sorry."

"Apology accepted. Vision! Answer the question! What medicine does Dracula take when he is sick?"

Tense silence. Rhodey's finger was still pointed in Vision's face, and the atmosphere was so thick and anticipatory that Tamika puts aside her own feelings for the synthezoid and leans in closer, peering at his face and _begging_ him to give into the peer pressure. Vision meets all of their eyes individually, as if to make a point about how their silence isn't doing anything to him.

It's only when he cranes his neck down to look at Wanda that he actually gives in. Wanda raises her eyebrows at him, a smile playing at her lips, and it's obvious that she wants to see him break—

Vision sighs and gently pushes Rhodes' finger from his face.

"…Coffin medicine."

"HA!" Rhodey grins, threw back the rest of his cheap beer, and slammed it back on the table with gusto. "That's my man!" He says, right over the top of Sam's groaning and Wanda's giggling. Vision's face is bland, but his eyes are amused, and even Tamika was snorting. "See, was that so hard?"

"It was _excruciating_."

Sam raises his beer and winks, "If the pun is excruciating, then my friend, _you are doing it right_." Sam threw his arm around Tamika and Rhodey's shoulders, dragging them in closer so that he could 'whisper' (read: shout, really), "Moving onto more important things… Are we seriously not going to talk about that badass air manoeuver me and Rhodes' pulled off or am I going to have to brag about this all by myself?"

Wanda dips her head, chuckling, "It… _was_ pretty awesome."

"And that's why you're my favourite," says Rhodey, before raising his hand and flagging a waiter, "Hey, could you bring us another round? Same as last time. Oh, and another dozen oysters," He sends Tamika and her two empty flatters a pointed look, "seems a certain someone is enjoying them."

Tamika shrugs. "I like my seafood."

"Yeah, well, my wallet doesn't appreciate that, so if you could slow down—"

"No way. I'm eating you out of your house and home. No remorse, no mercy, no prisoners."

"Where do you even _put_ it? Have you opened a little pocket dimension under the table where you drop your oysters for later?"

"First of all, that isn't what my powers do, and," Tamika throws her hands up, "I like my seafood! It's a thing!"

After a moment of intense, oddly sober staring, Rhodey nods. "Fair enough."

And that's that.

.

* * *

.

"The phasing and invisibility still _aren't compatible_ ," Tony says, removing the electrodes from her head before scooting backwards towards his computers. He hasn't gotten off of his chair since Tamika arrived. That was three hours ago. "But I'm going to be honest — don't get used to it — and admit that I have no idea why."

Tamika rubs some feeling back into her arms. "I thought science was, like, your thing."

"It _is_ , like, my thing," Tony repeats her own words, rolling his eyes, "but for science, I need something to quantify if I want results to analyse, and I don't have a clue where to start with you and your… ghost-y ness. Cut me some slack, kid. I'm a _bit_ out of my depth here."

She concedes there. It was pretty hard to measure the energy Tamika radiated when she phased when all monitoring material literally dropped off her body when she tried to use her powers.

"…but this is going to annoy me if I don't figure it out," Tony continues, pursing his lips at the data he _did_ manage to gain from the three hour non-invasive ("scouts honor,") tests, "so I need you to shoo. Like, _right now_. I'm going to figure out how the hell I'm supposed to experiment with you — and _that_ sounds creepier than I intended it to — so I need you to not bother me."

"But I'm not doing anything?"

"You're breathing. It's distracting."

"Um, okay. Sorry?"

"Apology accepted. Now," Tony looks up from his screen and points at the door, "out. Go play with some dolls or something, I don't know, just don't do it in here for, say, six hours? Maybe ten? Who knows. Bye."

Tamika blinks. For lack of anything to say, she turns on her heels and silently walks out the door. Tony probably doesn't even notice. She's probably a bit too amused by this than she should be, but, you know — typical Tony.

It's hard not to laugh.

.

* * *

.

"Where are you going this time?" Tamika asks, her back curled like a question mark as she sits hunched on Wanda's bed. She has a biology textbook open on her lap with an un-capped highlighter sitting in the spine, neglected. Wanda had entered the room, grabbed her first aid kit, and started changing into more battle appropriate clothes (which was to say, _not_ her pajamas).

"Hm?"

"You have a mission, right?" Tamika gestures towards Wanda's general vicinity, where she is frantically cleaning up, multi-tasking by brushing and braiding her hair with her scarlet and pulling on her boots with her hands. "Where is it?"

"Am I allowed to tell you that if you aren't an Avenger?"

"Do you care if you're not?"

"Not particularly."

"Then yes, you're allowed to tell me if I'm not an Avenger."

Wanda hums, hair successfully if not messily braided. "I don't know what type of mission it is, we'll be briefed in the jet, but I know where we're going. Wakanda,"

Tamika smiles, "Wakanda? Are you sure you can handle the heat?"

Wanda sends a streak of scarlet to gently toss Tamika's hair, "Hush, you. I'll be fine. Perhaps it'll be cooler in the city." Yeah, Tamika doubts that. She tries not to say anything, though she's sure her sister can pluck the thought from her mind easily enough. Tamika makes no effort to cloak her mind from Wanda's probing fingers, after all. "Will you be fine here? Steve, Sam and Nat are coming as well."

Tamika wrinkles her nose, "You can't take the synthezoid with you?"

"Vision is fine. I don't know what your problem with him is."

"I don't know what _your_ fascination with it is, so that's fine,"

"He's a child, little sister," Wanda huffs, rolling her eyes, "Besides, his mind is… peaceful. He's curious. Too young to know how to be malicious — all he does is ask questions. He never intends to harm and he never makes assumptions about me, or about _you_. That said, he isn't stupid. He's noticed that you treat him with a certain amount of... hostility."

"Oh, it has, has it."

"Yes, he has," Wanda pulls on a cardigan — hey, it was hot in _Wakanda_ , not New York — and jumps onto the bed, bouncing Tamika up. She plants a quick kiss to Tamika's forehead and rolls back off the bed, a bit ungraceful about it, too. Tamika wants so badly not to be smiling. She fails. "You should be nicer to him. He hasn't done anything to deserve how you treat him."

"Don't care. Don't like it."

Wanda sighs, drifting towards the door, "Child."

Tamika picks up her highlighter and says, loftily, "I don't care how old it is—"

There's a smirk on the witch's face as she evenly interrupts with: "I _wasn't_ talking about _Vision_ ,"

"Wow." The younger girl rolls her eyes and gives her textbook all of her attention, waving her empty hand dismissively, "whatever, I get the point. You can go and save the world, I guess. I don't care anymore."

Wanda laughs, the sound short and sweet, and the amusement carries into her voice as she says, "I'm sure. I'll be back by Thursday, I think. Good luck with your homework!"

" _Go_ , Wanda."

"Love you!"

Tamika huffs. "…Love you too."

The door shuts behind her, and though Tamika doesn't _hear_ Wanda's teasing laughter through the walls, she sure as hell can feel it vibrating in the back of her skull.

Honestly.

Telepaths.

.

* * *

.

(She doesn't tell anyone — and she's not sure if Wanda has or not, but if she had, it'd probably be to Vision — but each time before Tamika was taken in by Strucker to be tested against the scepter, she was injected with a virus first.

Something concocted from Chitauri blood, probably to prepare her body and mind or both for another, more powerful, alien contaminant. Tamika doesn't know. No one ever really explained it to her, and Tamika had never dared to wonder too much about it — hadn't the time to. Each and every time the scepter was exposed to her body, over and over and over until she built some sort of _immunity_ to the worst of it, there was the virus.

And each and every time there was the virus, there was the _sickness_ : a fever that sunk its claws into her during the night before any sort of curiosity could form, and it didn't leave for eight days. Always eight days, and always, those eight days were hell.

It wasn't the heat, or the sweating, or the ache in her bones, or the occasional opportunity to puke where she slept. They were bad, but Tamika knew how to prepare for them, how to survive on the bare minimum treatment the doctors gave her—

 _couldn't have their subject dying, after all, not if they could help it_

—god, no. The physical aspects, she could power through them. She could go through all of them because as soon as the fever broke, her body would forget all about how it felt to nearly spew her stomach out. It'd feel like a fever dream, even if her cell wasn't hosed down properly and the smell still _lingered._ She could deal with it.

Jesus, but the hallucinations—

The hallucinations were a different story.)

.

* * *

.

 _Sometimes it makes her dream of an empty void that swallows her whole and dances under her skin, whispering and cackling and singing a dark song. She feels the sensation of that dream for days afterwards, and the rest of her nights until her next interaction with the scepter are of the same sequence, over and over and over. It is so unsettling that she's eager to return to the scepter and get a new nightmare._

.

* * *

.

"You haven't been sleeping," the synthezoid notes as he walks into the room. Tamika is wrapped in at least two blankets, but her feet are poking out from the bottom, both of which are covered in crocheted socks. Tamika did them herself in the early hours of the morning. They're a bit loose and amateur, but they do the job, and she's pretty proud of them.

Tamika sends Vision a warning glance, as if to remind him that however friendly he is with her sister, he shouldn't expect the same behaviour from her. "I've been sleeping."

Vision tilts his head, innocently curious in all the ways that a child is curious; except instead of asking why the sky is blue, Vision's curiosity is about human emotion. It's harder to answer questions relating to why you cry when you're sad, or why you don't cry even if your biology demands that you do. "Then you haven't been sleeping well?"

She doesn't respond to that. It's not really any of his business. "Humans tend to start conversations with 'hello, how are you?', by the way."

"Oh. Hello, Tamika. How are you?"

"I'd be better if you turned around and walked back out."

"Would you?"

 _You should be nicer to him. He hasn't done anything to deserve the way you treat him._

Sighing, she grumbles, "…No."

Vision nods, for all intents ignoring her hostility as long as his question has been answered. "Do you know how to be better, then?" He asks.

Tamika blandly replies, "I'm doing it right now."

Vision looks at the movie on the screen. " _Bigfoot's Reflection_ is how you make yourself feel better when you are sad?"

"Yes."

"Does it always make you feel better?"

"Well. When it doesn't, I just watch alien documentaries."

"Do you enjoy conspiracy theories?"

Tamika rolls her eyes. "Considering the company we keep, I'm not sure the existence of aliens counts as a _conspiracy_ anymore. If someone like Thor can exist, I don't see why Bigfoot can't."

Vision's pupils mechanically dilate. Those neurons inside his head are firing like it's their last chance. It amuses Tamika to think that he's fretting so much over the existence of Bigfoot. _Bigfoot._ "That is a valid point," Vision settles on saying, diplomatic as ever, "Thank you for your insight, Miss Maihi."

Tamika shrugs. "You leaving or staying?"

"Past interactions between us would lead me to conclude that you would prefer me to leave?"

"Are you going to tell on me to Wanda if I agree with you there?"

Vision nods. "I understand. I will… see myself out." He goes to do just that.

She lets him make it as far as the door before Wanda's nagging presence in the back of her head wears her down. "Have you ever watched _The Edge of the Universe?_ " She asks, barely raising her voice to be heard. Being a synthezoid, however… Vision turns around. Tamika screws her nose up, then moves her legs from the couch. "It's a space documentary. You'd probably like it."

"Why?"

"Because you look like a space geek, I guess, I don't know. Do you want to watch it or not?"

Vision tilts his head, frowning. "Your actions are contradictory. Do you enjoy my company or do you resent it? Every time I think I have an answer, you… change your mind." Tamika blinks, utterly uninterested. "Is it the influence of puberty? My own personal research suggests that dramatic mood swings are a strong indicator of hormones, and since you are turning seventeen—"

Tamika coughs, face burning. "Uh…"

Vision cuts himself off. "…I'm making you uncomfortable,"

"Yeah."

"Would you like me to… stop?"

"Very much, yeah."

Vision nods. Then clasps his hands behind his back. He doesn't know enough to be awkward, but Tamika does, so Tamika is. "Does my invitation to watch space documentaries with you still stand?"

Tamika hates to say it, buuuut… "It… does."

"Very well. Thank you." He floats over and sits in the space Tamika cleared for him, posture perfect, hands on his knees, and eyes fixed on the screen. It's so abnormal that Tamika simply stares at him, probably a bit too long. Is it just her or does he look like Paul Bettany? When he turns his head to look at her, Tamika startles. "…Are you going to play it?"

Right.

 _That._

"…I was getting there."

"Oh. My apologies then."

"Umm… yeah, sure," Awkward pause. "…Anyway, space," Vision nods, as if to agree. _Yes. Space. Correct._ Tamika waits for him to say something, but he maintains his silence; she ends up putting on the documentary in record time just to hear someone speak, even if it is a documenter.

Wanda had better be grateful when she returns from Wakanda.

.

* * *

.

(Tamika stands in the middle of infinity, and it stretches beyond her comprehension; underneath her feet, under her fingers, surrounding her body and yet, not limited to it — extended from it, perhaps? There is a — a suffocating aspect to where she is, wherever that is. A choking blackness, a miserable grey, a blinding white, everything in between, and then everything on the outskirts.

And she can't see anything but she can _feel_ everything: there is a drawer three steps to her right, a 34.67 cm lamp on top of it, and she is lying on something 72 inches wide by 80 inches long. In the next room (30 paces north-west) is an empty room that resembles Tamika's in dimension but varies radically regarding content, and she knows that because—

Because she can _feel it._

It is too much

 _too_

 _m_

 _uch_

for Tamika's _humanness_. There is a knot of tension between her temples, tightening and tightening with each breath Tamika breathes in this empty-full space. There is a — a bird, singing ( _screaming_ ) in her chest; Tamika takes a breath; something squeezes her throat.

 _like a silver of glass piercing my flesh and sticking to the soles of my feet_

She closes her eyes. When she opens them, she is lying flat on her back. She recognizes the thin mattress under her, just as she recognizes the stench of bile, the sound of rain water dripping from somewhere high, the scratchy nightgown that she's wearing. She isn't hungry. The doctor forces food down her throat anyway.

 _You need to be at your peak condition before you can see Herr Strucker_ , the woman says.

"What?" Tamika mutters. She gags on the food. The food is pushed back past her lips. She spits it out, and once again demands, "What are you doing? Why are you doing this—"

 _It's for your own good,_ the woman says.

The woman is Wanda.

"Wanda?"

Wanda tilts her head. She's wearing a nightgown as well. Her hair is in her face. Her eyes are sparkling scarlet. _If I asked who you fought for, do you think your answer would be different?_

"Of course," Tamika says around a stone in her throat, "I have you now,"

Wanda smiles. The scarlet drips down from her eyes, and when she whispers, _Liar,_ Tamika's gone before her lips can finish the 'r'.

The cell disappears. Tamika is in a jet, holding Wanda's hand. On the other side of Wanda is Pietro, body curled and foot tapping so fast it's a mere vibration. No one is speaking but the sound of the jet roars in Tamika's ears to the point where it's just a deafening _buzz_.

Steve — no, the Captain looks down at his hands. He is speaking from a great distance. His voice is a belly-deep scream in front of her face.

 _Ultron thinks we're monsters. That we're what's wrong with the world. This isn't just about beating him: it's about whether he's right._

Pietro's voice saying, _You are taller than Wanda told me._ He is warm. He has Wanda's chin. Tamika flinches away from his hand.

Pietro's voice saying, _Be careful, sister. You can't look after all of them and yourself without having to sacrifice one or the other._ Tamika phases a hole through a robot's head and tells him to mind himself before he worries about her.

Pietro's voice saying, _Bet you didn't see that coming._ He is bleeding red into his blue and Wanda's forehead is pressed to his heart as she sobs and he does not shush her and put his hand in her hair like he ought to.

Pietro's voice, wavy and uncertain, blurry and _wrong_ , saying, "Tamika, I'm sorry." She thinks it sounds wrong because she never heard him say it.

She tries to say, _it wasn't your fault it was mine I should have looked for you like you looked for me_ but what comes out is, "You weren't allowed to die. Wanda didn't want you to die and now she's stuck with _me_ and that's _your fault_ —"

Tamika trips. Tamika falls. Tamika lands back on the table, strapped down, the blue of the sceptre dancing across her body. It sinks into her, and she closes her eyes, she closes her eyes and screamsscreamssc **re** _ **ams**_ only when she opens her eyes, she's in a pink-hued room with peeling wallpaper.

Someone knocks on the door. "Come in," says a voice like Tamika's. The body she is in sits up, rubs its eyes, and looks expectantly towards the door.

The door opens. "Hey, breakfast is ready. Get up." Says her dad.

The voice like Tamika's tells him, "I hate you."

Her dad smiles and responds, "You too, honey. Hurry up before Erik eats all the bacon." Tamika's body gets up because it doesn't want Erik to eat all the bacon. The floor drops out from under her feet and she falls, falls, _falls_ and there is no one to catch her the nothingness surrounds her like a physical thing and it is no effort at all for Tamika to reach out and

 _dig_

her hands into it to catch her

nails on the fabric of the void and

tear her way down

if she is going into the abyss then she will take something

with her she'll make a cannibal out of this god;

she isn't going down alone notagain notagainnot —)

.

* * *

.

There is a hand on Tamika's shoulder, and then there is a hand going _through_ Tamika's shoulder, and then Tamika has her hand through somebody's head, clutching a cold stone, and then somebody's voice, somebody she _knows_ , saying, "Tamika, you were having a bad dream."

There is that thickness like fabric swathed around Tamika except when she blinks, she is still in the rec room. She looks down at her arm. The hand connected to it has the infinity stone clutched in its hand. She doesn't even know if she _can_ pull it out but she knows that she would have tried anyway.

Tamika pulls her hand back. Sans the stone.

Vision takes a step back and asks, "Are you awake?"

Tamika clenches her fists and feels something crumple up in it, though when she looks down to check what is is her palm is empty. "I don't know," she tells him. Her socks are still on. She can feel the carpet through them because she made the gaps too wide. She isn't good at crocheting. "Do you think I'm awake?"

"I don't see how what I think matters to you in your current condition," Vision says. "May I touch you?"

"No."

"Would you like me to make you a hot beverage? Your sister considers them comfort after a bad dream. Is it the same for you?"

"…Yes."

"Do you have a—"

"Tea. Any type. One sugar. Hot."

Vision nods. "Sit." He says, floating into the kitchen. Tamika watches him go. Her knees feel weak. She sits down and continues watching him. He starts to make the tea. He puts the milk in before the hot water. It's lukewarm and too milky and too sweet when he gives it to her, so Tamika throws it all back in one go, wincing.

It's the grossest thing she has ever willingly ingested. "It was nice," she murmurs, putting the cup on the coffee table, "thank you,"

"You are welcome. I have been… told," which is Vision talk for _I Googled this thing using my Internet brain and want to know if the information is accurate or not,_ "that talking about bad dreams helps."

"No, it doesn't."

Vision frowns in thought. "Not for you?"

"No."

"Then…" Vision picks up her empty cup and stands. "…I will put on _Bigfoot's Reflection_ to make you feel better."

Tamika blinks. Huh. Okay. She watches the floor under Vision and imagines it extending on and on and on and on like a bad dream he wouldn't wake up from.

(She doesn't know if it is her imagination or not that makes the trip to and from the kitchen so long.)

"Thanks," she murmurs, wringing the hem of her sweater in her hands. "I'm gonna shower first. That okay?"

"Why wouldn't it be?" A genuine question. For some reason, that makes it easier not to flinch.

"They didn't let me shower. I had to ask. Most of the time they said 'no'. Sometimes they gave me a bar of soap and a bucket of water. When I was good, the water would be warm."

The water was not often warm.

He takes this information in easier than a human would. "Your experience with HYDRA was different from Wanda's,"

A question or a statement? Either way, the answer is simple.

"She volunteered. I didn't."

.

* * *

.

She wakes up the next day at two in the afternoon. Vision phases through her wall and she can tell without lifting her face from her pillow. She can feel his intrusion in her space, like her mind extends past her body and to her environment. His footsteps are like little _tap tap tap_ 's against the back of her hand.

"Vision," she greets, kind of. "Do you know what a door is?"

"Yes. Would you like me to go out and knock?"

"No point if you're already here. What do you want?"

Something is placed on her bedside drawer. It's a small drawer. He must have moved the giant reading lamp to make room. Tamika reaches out and grabs the handle of the cup without moving her head. "It is chamomile tea. I read that it helps with sleeping problems."

Tamika hates chamomile. It tastes like muck.

She takes a sip. "Thank you."

"I also wanted to know if you would be amiable to watching an episode of _How It's Made_ with Mr Stark and I?"

Tamika likes _How It's Made._ But first, "Will I have to shower?"

"Mr Stark hasn't. I wouldn't expect you to either."

Well.

.

* * *

.

(Tamika tromps into the rec room with her needles and yarn and sits as close to Tony as the scrap metal and tools surrounding him will allow her. "Tinkering?" She asks, frowning at the grease already in the carpet. Are they going to hire someone to clean that, or will he just buy a new carpet all together?

… Does she even have to wonder?

He returns her sneer. " _Knitting_?"

"She's crocheting," Vision corrects him before Tamika has to. "She is very good at it. She made her own socks. They have kiwi birds on them."

"Sucking up to the in-laws, huh," Tony snorts, shaking his head, "Figures.")

.

* * *

.

"How goes the knitting?" Rhodey calls as he pulls his earphones out. He's sweated through his shirt and the stench carries to Tamika's side of the room. She screws her nose up and turns the radio at her elbow down.

"It's crochet!"

Rhodey lifts his brows. "That too."

She presents to him a tangled ball of yarn. "How do _you_ think it's going?"

"Is it supposed to look like that?"

"It's supposed to be a _scarf._ "

"Then I'm guessing the knitting—"

" _Crocheting_ ,"

"—isn't going too well. What's next on the list? Sewing?" Tamika purses her lips and nods. "I can help you with that, if you like." Rhodey says, unexpectedly.

Tamika looks up. "Seriously? You know how to sew?"

Rhodey laughs and mops his face with a tiny towel that Tamika doesn't entirely understand the purpose of. Hand towels are stupid. He jogs over and Tamika kicks out a seat for him, which he collapses in. "No need to sound so surprised. I took home ec in high school. Wanted to impress this girl, see, except I turned out to be better at sewing than her and she ended up hating me. I told my friends that it was an easy 'A' and that's why I kept at it, but honestly, it was kind of fun."

"You wouldn't mind…?"

"Teaching you? Nah, it's good. It'll be fun! At least until you accidentally sew your sleeve to your fabric," He laughs at the look on her face, rushing to assure her that, "it doesn't happen that often! Only when you're starting out, but it's an easy fix, so don't worry."

"If you say so," says Tamika, already resolving to never sew her sleeve to her fabric, even under the pain of death. "But what do I do with this?" She lifts the yarn. "Seems a waste to just chuck it." The needle she lost in it an hour ago untangles and clutters loudly against the table. Tamika tries not to flush too bad, but she's afraid she fails.

Rhodey picks up the needle and snorts. "Tony could probably build a robot cat that would adore that. You should ask him when he gets back from the September Foundation thing. Should we go through the basics right now or do you wanna wait until after your sister gets back? She comes back today, right?"

"Yeah… I'd rather get the basics down before she comes back. Is that…?"

"It's fine, I just gotta shower. I stink."

"…You really do."

"Don't hold back or anything," Rhodey rolls his eyes and gets to his feet. "You can go and find a sewing machine, I guess. Dunno if there's one just lying around, but considering it's Tony…" There's a fond look on his face as he shrugs, "There's probably one around here."

(There is. It's under the sink, painted red, and has a mini-flamethrower that shoots a tiny orange flame from the needle when you press down on the spool pin. Rhodes sighs and mutters, "Jesus, Tony, not cool…This'll have to do.")

(("I guess that just means I'll be on top of all the _hot_ trends," Tamika had said. Rhodey had to put the sewing machine just so he could give her a high five, laughing.))

.

* * *

.

FRIDAY tells them that there is an incident they should be aware of just as Rhodey starts coaching Tamika through winding the bobbin. They move into the living room and settle in front of the television. Rhodes is still muttering to her about the technicalities of a sewing machine when Vision enters, face grave.

The TV turns on.

The side of a building is on fire. People, _innocent_ people, are screaming. _Crying_. Half-charred bodies are being loaded into ambulances. The reporter keeps repeating the same thing: … _Wanda Maximoff, Wanda Maximoff, Wanda Maximoff…_ King T'Chaka is saying, "…Victory at the expense of the innocent is no victory at all."

Rhodes puts his head in his hands. Vision gets up to make tea. Tamika closes her eyes, but the explosion on screen is still being looped. This isn't a nightmare.

Oh, God.

This is real.

.

* * *

.

Wanda comes home before Tony.

Tamika meets her as the bay doors open. She comes out last, trailing behind Steve, whose shoulders are squared and jaw defensive as he prepares for a fight. When he sees that it is only Tamika waiting, however, he nods to her, eyes kind, and steps aside.

Tamika rushes forward and lets Wanda lean against her, lets Wanda dip into her mind and hide in her the _marae_ her mind takes the shape of, and carefully does not ask any questions the entire way back to her room.

.

* * *

.

"They don't understand." Tamika promises, her arm wound through Wanda's. Young Wanda, with a power she does not understand, unwillingly taken, worth less than the trouble they curried; Tamika's first and only sister. "How could they? If they knew who you were, Wanda, there would be no fear. You aren't a monster."

"But what if I am? I don't know how to control my powers. The full scope of them is... beyond me. What happens next? Will I blow out the ward of a children's hospital? An orphanage? Will I accidentally level a city?" Shaky sigh. A worried bottom lip. "I _am_ dangerous. They are right on that, at least."

Tamika doesn't like the blue bruises underneath Wanda's eyes. She doesn't get enough sleep as it is. To lose anymore… "We're _all_ dangerous."

"Not like me. No one is as dangerous as me. I'm a nuclear weapon, Tamika. Radioactive."

Tamika does not raise her voice, but her tone is sharp enough, "You're a _girl_!" Wanda's eyes widen at the venom. Tamika's shoulders tremble, but she does not soften. "You're my sister. Not a weapon."

For a moment, Wanda looks stunned into silence. Knowing it is a foolish thought but having it all the same, Tamika hopes Wanda will retreat on the grounds of her surprise. Instead, her lips twists into a not-smile. "I kill just the same."

"Weapons don't value life the way you do." Tamika knows this because Natasha tells her so, every time Tamika sinks into the blackness herself, and Natasha knows better than anyone Tamika's met what it's like for them. "You're a hero — "

"Nineteen," Wanda interrupts, voice flat, "were injured."

Tamika's heart plummets. "Wanda..."

"Seven died on the way to another hospital. Twenty-one died on sight from lacerations, third degree burns, crushed ribs and internal bleeding, among other things."

"Wanda — "

"The facial disfiguration was so terrible that — "

" _Wanda!_ "

She stops, face blank, fingers twitching restlessly.

Tamika feels sick. She grabs Wanda's fingers and twines them with her own, grip so tight they may as well be grinding their bones together. "You made a mistake. That doesn't make you a monster beyond redemption, or a weapon to be put under lock and key. It's — you're not some — some rabid dog to be collared and muzzled! Don't _ever —_ "

Wanda's frown unwrinkles itself like Tamika has smoothed it out with her own thumb. "No, no. I did not mean to imply... what HYDRA did to you, it is not like my situation — "

Tamika rears back, her own eyes wide. "No. This isn't about — this has nothing to do with how — you're not a villain! That's what we're talking about!"

Wanda isn't convinced, that much is obvious. "Are you having nightmares again?"

Tamika does not like lying to Wanda. She grits her teeth, a sudden ache rising in her chest. It is soon suffocated by pure agitation, like talons scratching upwards from inside of her abdomen. "Stop trying to distract me."

Wanda frowns as if affronted. "I'm concerned."

"So? _You're_ the one with the King of Wakanda gunning for her. My issues aren't that important right now _._ I just, I want you to be okay. _That's_ what matters. You."

Wanda is quiet. Contemplative. Twisting the old ring on her thumb, eyes lowered to avoid Tamika's eyes. She's clenching and unclenching her fingers sporadically. She looks up eventually to meet Tamika's eyes, something unreadable about her, something angry on her tongue, but whatever it is she thinks to say never passes her lips at the sheer emotion on Tamika's own face.

And just like that, Wanda's entire face _crumbles._

"Tamika," She breathes into the space between them, "I am _scared_."

"Of what?"

"Nothing. Everything, maybe. Myself mostly. Of what I can do — of what I can be forced to do."

"No one can force you to do anything you don't want to."

"I have deluded myself before," Wanda says bitterly. "We cannot all be as indomitable as you, Tamika."

It is not a deliberate strike against her. Cruelly, it feels like one all the same. "That wasn't strength."

"No? I suppose you would think it was cowardice." Tamika blinks, startled. Wanda laughs sharply and shakes her head. "I know you. You think inaction is the same as running away. You're wrong, at least in this."

"My inaction has resulted in people dying. You've saved more than you've ever hurt, Wanda." Tamika reminds her. The words almost choke her. Or, the sentiment almost does. "That's your strength. You fight. You will always fight."

"Like a shell is sure to be deployed in war."

The frustration ties her tongue into knots. Tamika doesn't know what to do. She releases Wanda's hands, wraps her arms around her waist, and buries her face in her neck. Wanda tenses at the sudden contact. She relaxes quicker than Tamika ever has _(ever could)_ , raising her hand and resting it on the cushion Tamika's hair offers.

"I cannot feel another mind go out, Tamika," her sister confides, voice hollow, and Tamika wonders how it felt: to be aware of all those minds, constantly feeling what they feel, thinking what they feel — even death. She knows Wanda felt Pietro die. Does it feel the same? Or is it completely different?

Tamika doesn't know if she even _wants_ to know.

"I _cannot_. I would not — I could not survive it."

(Wanda thinks of death constantly now. Ponders on how fleeting life is. On how fragile humans are. She can't stop wondering when someone will take their last breath, the hows and whys and whos; she hasn't been able to. Not since Pietro.)

"Then you won't," she promises, feeling like a mortal bowing to a god's impossible whims. _Your wish is my command,_ she thinks, and she is _sworn._

(And God be damned if this isn't its own death sentence.)

"If you don't want to be around death any longer, Wanda, then you won't."

Her sister breathes harshly; a poor facsimile of a laugh. It's all Tamika can do to pretend she never heard it.

Instead, she closes her eyes and breathes in Wanda's spicy scent. She smells strongly of soap. Tamika knows that Wanda must have spent hours under scalding water, scrubbing her body raw. Her arms tighten into iron rods around Wanda's waist. She's surprised at how much it hurts — the idea of Wanda hurting herself, hating herself.

(It unsettles Tamika, what she'd do for Wanda — what she wouldn't do.)

.

* * *

.

"Secretary Ross has a Congressional Medal of Honour. which is one more than _you_ have."

"So let's say we agree to this thing. How long is it gonna be before they Lo Jack us like a bunch of common criminals?"

"117 countries want to sign this. _117_ , Sam, and you're just like, ' _No, that's cool. We got it.'_ "

"How long are you going to play both sides?"

 _Stop._

"…Our very strength invites challenge. Challenge incites conflict. And conflict... breeds catastrophe. Oversight... Oversight is not an idea that can be dismissed out of hand."

 _Who_ _ **cares**_ _?_

"Tony. You are being uncharacteristically non-hyperverbal."

"It's because he's already made up his mind."

"Boy, you know me so well. Actually, I'm nursing an electromagnetic headache. That's what's going on, Cap. It's just pain. It's discomfort. Who's putting coffee grounds in the disposal? Am I running a bed and breakfast for a biker gang?"

 _How is this even a_ _ **choice**_ _? How is this debatable for you?_

"Oh, that's Charles Spencer, by the way. He's a great kid. Computer engineering degree, 3.6 GPA... had a floor-level gig at Intel planned for the fall. But first, he wanted to put a few miles on his soul before he parked it behind a desk. See the world. Maybe be of service."

… _God. Just… Stop it._

"There's no decision-making process here. We need to be put in check! Whatever form that takes, I'm game. If we can't accept limitations, if we're boundary-less... we're no better than the bad guys."

"This is the United Nations we're talking about. It's not the World Security Council, it's not S.H.I.E.L.D., it's not HYDRA."

— _we will have an army of miracles in no time… oh, I think we should have a collar made up for you…_

— _one last time… work for me…_

… _I'd rather_ _ **die**_ —

"No, but it's run by people with agendas, and agendas change!"

 _I don't want to hear this. I don't_ _ **care**_ _._

"You're saying they'll come for me."

"We'll protect you."

Wanda grabs your hand. If Pietro were still alive, he would have known what to do to make her feel better. Instead, all she has is you. What can you do?

 _You can hold her hand._

(You won't fight for them.)

 _._

* * *

 _._

One issue…

 _('Who are 'they'?')_

.

* * *

.

" _In my culture... death is not the end. It's more of a stepping-off point. You reach out with both hands, and Bast and Sekhmet, they lead you into the green veldt where you can run forever."_

" _That sounds very peaceful."_

" _My father thought so. ..I am not my father."_

" _T'Challa... Task Force will decide who brings in Barnes."_

" _Don't bother, Ms Romanoff. I'll kill him myself."_

.

* * *

.

They won't let Wanda leave.

She doesn't seem to realize it, but Tamika's been a prisoner before so she's confident that she recognizes the signs. She knows the feeling it leaves in the air, the honey-like thickness, the hesitation.

Tamika didn't sign the Accords — wasn't even asked to, since she isn't an Avenger and her signature doesn't mean much, and no one has asked how she feels about it. She wonders if they've already assumed for her. If they even remember that she has an opinion.

She's trying not to dwell on it. This is much bigger than her feelings. Her voice doesn't have much weight behind it, anyway.

Wanda isn't catatonic, but Tamika thinks she would prefer it, because it is… unnerving. Unnerving?

Yes.

It is _unnerving_ to see Wanda pretend this isn't bothering her. Tamika wonders if she usually does that when she doesn't like what's happening. Pretend everything's okay. Pretend that she can sleep and she can go out in public without a disguise and pretend that she can be normal. She can't be.

Is that why she completely loses the plot so much? Because she bottles everything up, pretends _so_ hard, only for the universe to shove her and remind her that she _can't run away from this._ This is reality. And Wanda can't change reality, no matter how much she wished she could.

.

* * *

.

"They don't get it," Wanda was saying to her; whispering, of course, because with Tamika and Wanda things were always spoken in hushed whispers. Gently, as if they were afraid of shattering something with the power of their voices. Private. "The others," she clarifies. There is a part of Tamika that quails at the idea of _the others._ Her stomach churns at the thought: _others._

 _Away from us._

 _On the other side._

 _Opposition. Enemy._

 _Others._

Tamika does not want enemies, and she doesn't want the identity of them to overlap with those whom she recognizes as friend. Or _used_ to call. She isn't yet sure what is happening, how she is supposed to feel, whether she is supposed to be angry or offended or _what_. Steve is angry. Sam is offended. Barnes is — is here, really, for better or for worse. Wanda is here too (this is not universally recognized as a good thing).

But Tamika? She's — she's not fighting for something or someone. She doesn't care for the Accords, doesn't entirely understand them and no one's been willing to explain it without trying to _sell_ it to her at the same time. What she knows for sure is that Wanda is afraid.

Wanda is afraid and Tamika can't let that stand unopposed.

That isn't conviction.

(It isn't enough.)

"The others," Wanda was saying, "don't understand what it means. To have a soulmate. To have someone occupy the other half of your soul, to be unable to live a full life without them. They don't understand."

Wanda stares ahead blankly for a few counts. Tamika reaches and clasps her sister's limp hand tightly in her own. _Come back to me, come back,_ she thinks, and it takes a painfully long beat before Wanda tightens her fingers around Tamika's.

(It isn't enough.)

"What do you mean?"

Wanda's eyes are on the window, then the back of Clint's chair, then Scott's, then finally on Tamika. Her eyes soften marginally, and unbidden, warmth flares in Tamika's chest.

"The Captain and his soldier," She says, "They are like me and Pietro. Strong independent from each other, but better together. Happier. Whole. Even... even if the circumstances weren't as they are and I had a choice - to follow Steve or follow Stark - I think that I would choose this."

Tamika isn't surprised. Wanda doesn't just want to help, she _needs_ to, and if the Accords would think to deny Wanda this basic urge of hers... no, Tamika isn't surprised.

She's just... unsure.

"And you?" Wanda grips her hand. Tamika looks up from her lap, not realizing that she'd looked down. Wanda's eyes are intent on her face, and even though Tamika is as folded in on herself as she possibly can be without breaking her spine, she wants to curl up even more if it means escaping Wanda's eyes.

But the grey —

The grey won't help here.

This is all about taking a stand. Tamika can't hide, as much as she wants to.

She thinks that's her answer right there. _And you?_

— _What about me? What would I choose? Do you even have to ask?_

What else has Tamika ever chose, if not the safest option for her? That's what she does. She _hides._ She isn't meant for sticking her chin up and choosing sides. She's meant for a quiet life, an insignificant life, not — not this. Not this.

( _You name is Tamika Maihi. You don't know where you are exactly because you don't know a damn thing about American geography, but you do know that you are in a van with three trusted friends, travelling to an airport. It is the year 2016. You are seventeen years old. You will not hurt your friends._

 _But you can't be sure of this._

 _You can't be sure of anything.)_

"Cестра?"

Scott lets out a loud snore from the front seat, snuffles, and shifts with an uncomfortable sounding screech of skin against leather. Clint is still whistling along to some Taylor Swift song. Tamika knows he's listening. He has to be, even if it's accidentally or subconsciously. If Scott's pretending to be asleep, then he's probably listening as well. Almost definitely, in fact. Tamika can't be sure. She doesn't have enough information.

Wanda speaks too quietly and holds her hand too tightly and smells too much like home, but this isn't home, it isn't, and they haven't and aren't able to carve out an alcove in the world where time is irrelevant and Tamika is allowed to put her head between her knees and cry because _she doesn't understand what's happening, Wanda, when did things get so_ _ **loud**_ — and Wanda can't pet her hair and tell her that she knows, she knows and she's sorry and she promises things will be quieter in the morning because, because, _because_ —

 _(It isn't_ _ **enough**_ _.)_

Because, _something._

Tamika doesn't _know._ She doesn't _get it,_ okay? Sue her.

"I..."

"...сестра?"

"I... want to sleep, Wanda." Tamika says, cringing as it comes out of her mouth. "I don't know what... is happening, exactly, but I — I want to sleep. I want to close my eyes and go to sleep."

Wanda looks at Tamika for longer than Tamika is comfortable with. "Clint. How long until we arrive?"

Clint's whistling pauses, "Uhhh, 'bout an hour? Perfect for a nap. You tired, girly girl?"

"I can always sleep,"

"Sleep is good. Sleep is great. I would love to be sleeping myself but I'm a bit busy babysitting so I can't. That wasn't passive aggressive btw, I'm totally cool with you sleeping."

"I don't think you are supposed to say 'btw' out loud like that."

"It's hip."

"It isn't."

"Then I'm _lazy_. Get off my case, witchy, I'm only trying to reconnect with the youth here. Let me live."

Wanda's smile eases. Her shoulders don't. She's wary.

She always is.

.

* * *

.

She goes for Stark. First. She goes for the arc reactor, and then she goes for the flight systems, and then she tries to do as much damage as she possibly can. Her staff is just about to strike through Stark's leg when her weapon is webbed to the side of a plane.

Tamika curls her lips back from her teeth, pulls out the chains, and phases through the webs of the new guy.

"Wait. She can do that?! You guys _didn't say she could do that—_ "

.

* * *

.

 _Rhodey is diving_ , she thinks, and then, heart pounding: _No, he isn't._

He isn't diving.

He's _falling_.

He's falling, and _no one is catching him._

Stark and Sam chase him, but he's dead weight and he's plummeting too fast for them to catch him, maybe if they had more time, more air space, maybe if he wasn't so close to the ground—

There is a pulse that echoes through her bones and travels into the earth, ripples across the grass, and under Tamika's fingers is the drag of velvet and silk and polyester, mismatched fabrics stitched together by a clumsy hand, and all she has to do is pluck them out and restart that's all she has to do it wouldn't take any effort at all—

— _Rhodey is falling and there isn't enough space for him to be caught_ _ **but what if I made some**_ —

The ground drops out: Tamika stumbles, the earth shuddering and stretching like a waking beast, not unlike an earthquake except an earthquake doesn't _breathe_ like this, does it—

Rhodey is still falling, but he is falling from a higher place than he was a heartbeat ago ( _Four seconds,_ something whispered, its breath cool against the warm sweat on the back of her neck, _you gave him four seconds_ ) and that heartbeat is enough, it's _just_ enough for Stark's gauntlets lock around Rhodey's leg when he is far too close to the unforgiving ground for comfort. Stark heaves, groans,

 _pulls_ ,

puts the rest of his power to his flight systems and goes _up._

Sam lands. A few seconds later, so does Stark, gently, with Rhodey in his arms. Tamika is too far away to hear what's going on. She sees Sam blasted on his ass by Stark, but she can't be angry unless she knows if Rhodey is okay—

 _His neck is broken from being caught like that,_ Wanda tells her, tired, _but his spinal cord was not injured. He cracked his skull, too. He will recover from all of these._

 _How,_ Tamika breathes, _How can you know that? That he'll recover?_

 _Possibilities are easy enough to calculate when you know what to look for,_ says Wanda. Forget tired. This is _heartbroken_. _Pietro is the only one who knew. Maybe… maybe I will tell you about it as well. When we're safe._

'When we're safe'.

What a dangerous thought. Tamika isn't sure she can feel safe again. Not after this.

But Rhodey is alive, she reminds herself. Rhodey is alive and Steve's jet is a blurry dot in the distance, growing smaller the longer she squints at it. Their sacrifice got him what he wanted. At least Steve could be happy with that, if Tamika couldn't be happy with this.

Cooperate. Wanda's scarlet tells her. You know how this goes. We're going to be taken in. We'll be processed. You know how it goes.

 _I thought we were free._ Tamika's raw insides curdle, because she thought they were _free._ That's what she was _fighting_ for. _Freedom._

Tamika doesn't dare move. The Spider-Man boy stumbles over to where she is and sits heavily down beside her, groaning and tipping his head back to watch Stark fly Rhodey and Sam back over to the airport. Loftily, as if to hide how hopeful he actually is from her, he asks, "Do you think you could let me web your hands? It's for a good cause."

"You want me to let you imprison me to earn brownie points for Stark."

"… I can see why you wouldn't want to, but, uh, it'd mean a lot to me? Does that… help me in any way or… are you going to try and stab me with your spear again?"

"Let me think about it." Black Panther has Nat. Clint is checking on Nat. Vision has Wanda. Neither of them are resisting. Scott's not fighting, not after exhausting himself like that. Steve is gone, Bucky with him. They could still fight but what was the point with nowhere to go?

She presses her wrists together and holds them out, eyes still on Stark, no, still on _Rhodey._ Spider-Man cocoons her hands and wrists in the web-that-isn't-web. She could easily phase through them, but that isn't the point. Tamika puts her hands back on her lap and waits. Compliant. Cooperative.

Spider-Man clears his throat. "Uh, thanks." His voice cracks. She's pretty sure that's his blush turning his exposed neck red. Either that, or the white boy is sunburnt already. Tamika doesn't make any indication that she's heard him. He seems to come to a conclusion. "…You didn't do it for my benefit."

"No."

"Oh. Uh… I knew that,"

Quiet. Tamika starts to think. Steve is gone. She keeps coming back to that. _Steve is gone, because he left_. For Bucky. She isn't... sure she understands that. She isn't sure she _wants_ to be in a mindset where she could _ever_ understand what Steve's done. He left them — Scott, Clint, Sam, her, _Wanda_ — to be _captured_. He let them _sacrifice_ themselves—

Spider-Man's leg starts bouncing.

Tamika sighs and rubs her eyelids. "No offense, but… could you maybe… not? Right now?"

"You want me to shut up?" He places his hand against his chest, sounding surprised, "Yeah, no, yeah! I can do that! Sorry, I didn't — sorry. This is probably a really introspective moment for you and I'm ruining it by talking. And I'm _still_ talking. Sorry. I — I'm shutting up now."

Tamika snorts, but doesn't dare say a 'thank you', no matter how sarcastic it would be. She can't risk accidentally encouraging him.

Stark touches down.

Tamika stands and mentally prepares for some _real_ cuffs.

.

* * *

.

Tamika knows how this goes.

The processing is much the same, with the same stern-faced treatment of their guards and the same clinical detachment of their doctors (though to their credit, the uniforms were different). The actual Raft is more dangerous. It nests on top of the ocean, right above an infinite, choking void. A watery death threatens them constantly. Tamika is painfully aware of it with each wave that disturbs the equilibrium of the prison.

Strucker was good at being bad. Tamika didn't think it could get any worse than that.

Tamika was wrong.

Ross collars her as HYDRA once did; throws her into a cell and warns her from trying her powers. Tamika tries anyway, always pushing pushing pushing her limits, toeing the line, wondering, _how much can I get away with today?_

The answer is: not much.

The collar not only anchors her but tells the ambiguous _they_ of every attempt she makes. She tries for the grey world, dips her finger into monochrome and feels its refreshing coolness teasing her veins, breathes in the emptiness and prepares to welcome it into her body, and then—

And then, _pain._ Bruising, shocking, _burning_ pain centered in her throat. Tamika has a split second to scream, and then darkness. She's welcomed by a painful sleep. She wakes to a burnt throat and foreign hands prodding at her neck.

"Hey!.. _Hey_! Stop touching her!" Sam is yelling, banging on his cell. It is a futile effort. The fingers at her throat rub something cold in. Tamika tries to pull away. Fails.

"It's ointment. Medicine." They say, voice wavering. "For the burn."

The burn. Yes. Tamika can feel it. The ointment is doing very little to ease the pain. It is either a slow acting ointment, or this is another ploy. She can't tell.

"You shouldn't have pushed, silly girl," _chides_ the voice, "General Ross is not one for empty threats. I know it is the way of teenagers to rebel, but if you could exercise some common sense next time, me and my salve supply would _greatly_ appreciate it."

Shuffling. Tamika attempts to croak, "Sam?" to no avail. More shuffling, then a plastic cup presses against Tamika's lips. She chugs the water down. It is taken from her before it's completely empty. She chases it, but twitchy fingers push against her shoulders until her back is flush against the concrete walls.

"Tam? Tam, you awake, girly?"

This time, Tamika's throat doesn't fail her. "Sam?"

"Tam? Thank god. How are you?"

 _Tired._ "I-It hurts—"

"Yeah, girly, I know. These guys are a bunch of dirtbags, nothing we ain't handled before."

It is reassuring, the rise and fall of Sam's voice. Tamika didn't have this when Strucker had her. A comforting voice among the disarray. An anchor. It isn't enough.

But it's something.

"Sa—"

"Shush." The voice says sternly. The collar is fitted back around her neck, tighter than before. Or maybe the presence of an electrical burn is tricking her mind into thinking that. Tamika has no way to be sure. She's only just able to see properly. "Be silent, kid. There is no need for resistance."

The voice belongs to a man with an ordinary face. He wears glasses. There are laughter lines around his mouth, crow's feet from the corner of his eyes. A smudge of ink on the side of his finger and the bridge of his nose. Tamika wouldn't be able to recognize him outside of this setting.

What a thought.

"Right. Onto the next one." The man stands, nervously fidgets with the pressed cuffs of his shirt, gestures for the armed guards to follow him as he leaves her cell. Tamika sits up to keep him in her line of sight. He goes straight for the cell next to her. Wanda.

Wanda?

"Don't you dare _,"_ Clint says almost idly, if not for the frostbite in his tone. "Tamika was bad enough. If you so much as breathe on her, I'll—"

"Can somebody please shut him up?" The man huffs. The sounds coming from Clint are muted. "Oh. Thank you."

But Tamika can see his split lips moving still. As soon as Clint realizes he has been silenced, he begins to bang on the glass, utterly relentless and adding to Tamika's simmering headache until an irate guard finally looks at him. Clint waves his hands around — sign language, Tamika thinks, a beat too late — but the guard doesn't understand.

This is approximately the time when Clint flips him the bird. There's no way to misinterpret _that,_ nor the challenging smirk on Clint's face. For a second, it looks like the guard might storm over there and introduce Clint to the butt of his gun when _the_ voice hisses, "Crap, she's waking up. Dave, Barry, I need you here. _Now!_ "

Miraculously, Clint is saved from a beating, and even manages to sneak in one unmistakably rude gesture before the guard is forced to ignore him. Tamika isn't much amused, however. _Waking up?_

"Wanda?" She calls. Wanda should respond immediately, as she always has. A stone sinks in Tamika's stomach when nothing calls back. " _Wanda?_ W-What did you do to her?"

No reply. The man's voice reaches her ears, quivering unnaturally. "It's a salve," he says, and no more. The guards tap their fingers anxiously on their guns. There is a lot of noisy shifting.

Tamika tries again, "Wanda?"

And then finally, _finally_ —

"Tamika?"

Tamika's muscles are locked up and she has no energy to move. She lurches up from the corner of her cell and presses herself to the glass. "Wanda, are you okay? What happened?" Wanda doesn't reply. Tamika's anxiety skyrockets. Her throat burns and now her eyes sting. "Wanda?"

"There. Done. Let's leave." The man says, hastily gathering his kit and scrambling for the stairs. His guards follow at a slower pace, shoulders tense. Tamika doesn't watch them leave, waiting for Wanda's voice.

"Wan—"

"I am fine, little sister." Wanda replies, tired. Resigned. "You were hurt. I heard your mind scream, and then I heard it be silenced. I tried to reach out with my scarlet to see how you were—"

Her voice has the same strained, raw quality of Tamika's. It is no coincidence.

When they were being processed, Wanda had been behind Tamika, but had been collared and roughly thrown into a straight jacket before they'd even gotten out of the helicopter.

Wanda the Witch. Wanda the Other. Wanda the Feared-One, the Threat, the Foreigner. Chained and collared and lucky she is not muzzled.

Wanda had not resisted imprisonment, just as Tamika had not resisted. They knew how it went. Wanda was not passive so much as she was utterly unresponsive. The guards taunted and spat and Wanda looked ahead, shoulders hunched and mouth a flat line. Ross muttered something surely condescending to her and Wanda had stared into his eyes and said nothing.

But this...

Tamika is electrocuted into unconsciousness, and Wanda follows her into it without a second thought. This is not an honour. This is not flattering. Not humbling.

I love you, a part of her sings. Thank you. Thank you.

I love you, another part grieves, don't hurt because of me, Wanda, please, I love you too much to be fine with it.

"I'm fine. Wanda? I'm fine. I'm well. I know how it goes. Don't — you _can't_ — "

She is without her telepathy but she remains your sister. She knows your mind better than Tamika does. She interrupts, "I can, sister, and I will. I always will."

"I don't want you to hurt yourself for me!"

"What is mine, is yours. What is yours, is mine. For everything, Tamika, even this. Especially this."

.

* * *

.

Ross stops by to interrogate them on the whereabouts of Captain Rogers and the Winter Soldier. Tamika memorizes his face for safekeeping and tells him nothing. The second time he tries, she spits on the window. He gets the message.

.

* * *

.

 _"I'm sorry about your father. He seemed a good man. With a dutiful son."_

 _"Vengeance has consumed you. It's consuming them. I am done letting it consume me. Justice will come soon enough."_

 _"Tell that to the dead."_

 _"No! Stop!"_  
.

* * *

.

Tamika tries for the grey again. She's able to hold onto it for longer — long enough for the world to blink into monochrome, but not long enough for her to let it swallow her. She slams back into the colored world, conscious long enough to hear Wanda's choked sounds. She thinks they both go to sleep at the same time.

.

* * *

.

"He's coming. He's coming, Tam, I swear to _God,_ he hasn't forgotten us. He's coming back. You're getting out of here. You and your sister. We all are. He's gonna get us out. Breathe, alright? Just breathe with me. He's coming. He's on his way. This ain't forever."

.

* * *

.

Wanda's in a straightjacket. She can't move even to brush the hair out of her face.

Tamika moves for the both of them. She's throwing trays, banging against the walls, screaming and yelling and throwing her blankets and sheets at anyone who enters to calm her down. The shocks hurt. They always hurt. She doesn't get used to them. But what they don't seem to get is that when she goes down, so does Wanda, and _Wanda_ going down is unforgivable. Tamika isn't disheartened by the electrocutions.

If anything, they're just pissing her off even _more._

She doesn't know how long she's staying here, whether it'll be three months or three years, but she intends on sharing the hell of it with the ambiguous _they._

She's promising to.

.

* * *

.

Steve comes back for them. She's sleeping off her last electrocution when he does.

If a tree falls with no one around to hear it, does it still make a sound?

(If you're rescued when you're too knocked out to witness it, does it still count as a rescue? Or is it just another pipe dream?)

.

* * *

.

(Wakanda is so beautiful. King T'Challa as well.

But all Tamika is doing is sleeping. What does she know?)

.

* * *

.

She meets Barnes. Properly. Steve introduces them outside the medical room (she's leaving, he's entering) and it's just about as awkward as one would expect. He's not curt with her, exactly, but he's distant. Unwilling. A strange type of tired that not even Tamika has witnessed before. He moves gingerly, carefully, like an old man who has been hurt so much that he can't distinguish between wound and body. Mostly, she thinks he seems afraid. Of himself, more than others.

They part ways. Truthfully, Tamika doesn't see what's so special about him, what's so special about _him and Steve_ that made her Captain abandon her at the airport. She feels robbed. Like. Like she's the stupid one. The one being made fun of for not understanding something so simple. _Soulmates,_ says Wanda. _He'd do it for me,_ says Steve.

What is she missing? What isn't she getting?

She encounters him everywhere after that. In the hallways. Coming out of his room. Hanging around the balcony on the opposite side of her. He broods a lot. Sits there staring out into the fog, not even seeing anything. He drifts. Bucky Barnes, it seems to her, is a ghost unwillingly bound to flesh and bone. He doesn't seem to know what to do with himself. He only ever smiles around Steve, and even then, they're twitchy, hesitant things. Too much effort, not enough feeling.

Honestly, he's a sad sight. Even worse than her and Wanda.

(It's strangely comforting to know that HYDRA can break anyone, given the opportunity. That it isn't just her. That it isn't just Wanda. That it's _the_ Bucky Barnes, Captain America's sidekick, the Winter Soldier himself, as well.)

The first real interaction they have is in the gymnasium. Tamika wakes from a twelve hour sleep weighed down by her strange dream and determined, for once, to do something with her body. She feels restless. Weak. Atrophied. She cuts a one-way path to the training room with her bone staff and prepares to beat up some dummies.

Instead, she finds a one-armed assassin breaking open punching bags.

"Oh. I didn't hear you. I'll leave…"

"Don't." Barnes says. He doesn't falter in his movements. It seems like that's all he's going to say. For a while, the only sounds are his soft breaths and the meaty, solid sound of his fist connecting with the bag. "Do your thing. I'll do mine. Doesn't have to be weird."

It's nothing she expected to hear from him. It unbalances her enough that she's taking off her shoes and getting into position without consciously thinking of it. "Thanks."

Bucky grunts. He mumbles something that might have been, "You're welcome," but Tamika can't be sure, as she was already in the process of warming up. It's awkward. It's so, so, so awkward; awkward enough that Tamika knows it can't be all her doing. Which means Barnes is as awkward around her as she is with him.

This, unlike the whole traumatized-HYDRA-prisoner thing, is not comforting.

Because Barnes is an assassin. And probably kills whoever makes him uncomfortable.

Tamika doesn't actually want to die here.

"You're young." Barnes says suddenly, lowly. Tamika's body tenses up and she whips around in the direction of his voice, staff extended, and he waits the few minutes out for her to lower her weapon. There's something like regret in his eyes. "You're not even _legal_. And they had you for four years?"

"Give or take a few months." Tamika shrugs, refusing to meet his eyes. She's uncomfortable around him. Like there's ants under her skin. She'd rather he didn't speak to her at all. There's things he knows that she isn't sure she's ready to hear; or mature enough not to ask. "They had _you_ for seventy years. Sounds much worse than what I had to go through."

"It isn't a competition." He says, "Seventy years or four, it doesn't really matter. It all feels the same."

It's a small mercy that the phantom pains or memorized hurt isn't nearly as acute as it usually is. Still, the experience is at the front of her mind, and she thinks of the mantra she used to chant to herself to keep her head on straight, the one that reminded her again and again of the one thing she wouldn't move on: _I'm not killing for you_.

She then thinks of Barnes, who was a _Sergeant_ during the second war, who was captured and tortured by Zola, and what it had to _take_ for him to murder _for HYDRA_. Here's a man of strong moral fiber, with principals and empathy, who had his body and mind taken from him. _What did it take_ , she wonders. If Strucker is Zola and she is Barnes, what would it have taken to burn her resolve to ashes?

She has to ask.

"I have a question — of which you _don't_ have to answer," She establishes right away. Barnes looks at her from the corners of his eyes, eyebrows raised. "If it makes you uncomfortable or brings up bad memories. Or if you just don't want to. I mean. I'd understand."

"Go ahead. Ask."

Tamika swallows and fiddles with the hem of her shirt. He seems content enough to listen but that's only because he has no idea what she intends to drop on his head. Is it selfish? To ask what she's about to ask even though she knows he won't like it?

 _Yes._ A voice answers immediately. _You're making him relive a nightmare to quell your curiosity. You should never ask someone to go through that for your sake. It isn't right._

 _But,_ continues the voice as she stares at Barnes, psyching herself up, _you need to know. You need to know what broke him, what could possibly break you, otherwise you will torture yourself with all the possibilities. This is selfish, but humans cannot help themselves, and you need to know._

Right.

"What..." Begins Tamika, taking in a shaky breath. She refuses to break eye contact. It's hard. But she owes him this basic respect, if she can't reward him any else. "What did they do... to finally... break you?"

Barnes' face is drained of all expression pretty much instantly. His shoulders tighten. Although Tamika regrets asking him, she can't take it back. It's done. His eyes go dark as he either rifles through his memory for the answer, or for the quickest and cleanest way to kill her and dump her body.

When he doesn't seem to want to reply, Tamika scrambles to get some solid ground underneath her. "S-Sorry, I know it's —- not something you want to think about, but I..." She shifts. Swallows. Flicks her eyes away and then back again. "...when they had me, and I found out what they wanted me to do, I thought I could hold out forever against them. If I had to. Because they were monsters in their own rights and I wasn't… I wasn't helping. Their sick plans were _theirs_. It had nothing to do with me. Not if I didn't want it to. They couldn't take that away from me. I believed that I would die before they could — _convince_ me."

"I thought... I don't know, I thought that if I refrained from being the person they wanted me to be that... well, that there would be one less monster on the planet, and that the world would be a better place for it. It's what kept me, uh, strong, I suppose. Thinking that I had to do all I could to keep the world from going to shit, because — because this is where my mum lives, you know? So. So I kept resisting. I thought I would always resist."

Barnes stares at her silently.

"And I have no doubt that you were like that too, 'cause Steve said so, you know. But... but they did it to you anyway. Somehow. And it doesn't matter anymore since I'm not with them and I'd sooner kill myself than let them take me in again, but... I... wanted to know. I want to know what was so horrible that it broke the resolve of Sergeant Barnes. Because that might be what breaks me, too."

Tamika finishes her _novel_ meekly, glancing around the area as if expecting to see an audience of her friends watching her in disappointment and disgust. She's slightly relieved to see the room is still empty. It isn't one hundred percent favorable, however, because that leaves her alone in a room with no witnesses sitting beside the master assassin she's potentially pissed off.

Barnes makes her stew in the tension she built up. Rightfully deserved, she reckons. After that monologue _and_ that question, making her sit through silent judgment was the least he could do to pay her back for it. She deserves a lot worse.

God, what was she thinking?

Feeling horribly guilty, Tamika hunches in on herself. "I—sorry, that was too much, wasn't it? Do you want me to g—"

"Steve." Says Barnes. _Whispers_ Barnes, really. It shuts Tamika right up. "They used Steve."

She makes a confused face. "Steve?" She repeats owlishly.

Barnes looks so supremely uncomfortable that it's almost murderous. He soldiers on despite it. " _Steve_ is what broke me. I resisted HYDRA for ten years and was prepared to do it forever, and then they told me that Steve had crashed a plane fulla nukes into the arctic. Kinda… lost my nerves, I guess. I think. Thought, _'what's the point of fighting to go back to a world that ain't got Stevie in it?'_ and from there… it was easy. To let them do whatever they wanted t' me. It was easier."

(Always a little more innocence left to lose.)

"That's what'll break you." Barnes tells her matter-of-factly. "When they take away the one thing your heart always fights for." _Wanda_ , thinks Tamika instantly, followed by _Willmarr, Erik, Liam, mum._ Barnes continues, sounding wrecked by the memories. She doesn't blame him. She _doesn't blame_ him _._ "They figure out what it is and you're done."

Tamika can't imagine what it would have done to her if her family had been found and brought in by HYDRA. If they'd bargained their lives with her free will, if she'd have hesitated before inevitably choosing them. If she'd been tied down to a table and forced to watch a newsreel of her family's death, _Aroha Maihi and her three sons were killed today in an electrical fire that destroyed their entire home._

Tamika realizes, with a sharp pain in her chest and a sudden breathlessness, that if the death of her family had been proven while she was in HYDRA's claws, she would have given up _instantly_. To know that her family was out there living in a world HYDRA intended to enslave had kept her resolute in her decision to resist them. Take that away, however, and she would have _crumbled._ She would have collapsed like a house of cards. It would have been so easy. _So easy._

She swallows a lump in her throat and whispers, "... Barnes?"

"What?" He responds instantly.

"Thank you." She says quietly. Barnes nods. He's gone blank-faced again. If she wasn't so good at reading people, she might have missed the agony in his eyes. Even now, she realizes, Steve's supposed death is an open wound.

What is it like, to love someone that much? Is that what she's missing out on? Grief? A never ending sadness? Sorrow and guilt that chases you to the ends of the Earth and demands sacrifice after sacrifice until you're not so much _you_ as you are the broken pieces of who you used to be, stitched together by mourning? She doesn't want that.

She thinks Barnes doesn't want that either. She looks up from her hands and picks up her staff. It's compulsion that speaks next.

"Congratulations."

He raises his eyebrows. "For what?"

"For getting back someone to fight for." She smiles slightly. Apologetically. I'm sorry for bringing this up. "For getting back Steve." Barnes almost-blinks at her.

But then he grins. He doesn't actually reply to her, but nonetheless, when he turns back to his beaten bag and she turns back to her mats — Tamika feels forgiven.

.

* * *

.

"I will never fight for him again." Said Wanda, looking out into the foggy forest. Her mind stretched out over the canopy, scarlet trailing scarlet, anchored only by her little sister's hand. "Do not ask it of me, Steve."

Steve wished he didn't understand, if only so he could push her to change her mind. He wasn't interested in pushing, however; or at least not interested in pushing Wanda Maximoff. She would be a valuable — possibly vital — member of the Avengers, and the team would hurt without her, but no team was worth the sacrifice of a friend. No, Steve would not push her. If Wanda didn't want to be used as a weapon, to be armed and pointed at their enemies, then she wouldn't be. It was that simple.

(And if it wasn't… well then, Steve would _make_ it simple.)

Tamika sat on the floor next to where Wanda sat on the railing, her right hand in the air and clutched to Wanda's while her other occupied itself with a heavy textbook on… mathematics? She was armed with a highlighter and a biro to the side, kept from rolling with a block of pulsing scarlet.

Steve didn't feel like he had to ask to know what the answer would be to his question, but then, someone always had to ask, and Tamika most of all deserved to be offered a choice— even if her choice _was_ obvious.

"And you?" He nodded at Tamika, who looked up from her book and smiled, however weak and thin a smile it was.

(Guilt, heavy and sour, awakens from its slumber in his chest and peers a sharp, assessing eye at Tamika; at the bruises around her neck, at the bags under her eyes, at the whalebone staff propped up between her and Wanda.)

"Do you want to stay in Wakanda? King T'Challa would welcome your presence. ...as would the Avengers."

Tamika's brows pinched together. "I thought I was too young for the Avengers."

She was. Steve still believed that. Tamika was never supposed to be involved, but she never listened to Steve when he gave her the option to sit out, dismissed it without thought. _For Wanda,_ she had answered, every single time. _I stay for Wanda. I fight for Wanda._

 _You rely on her too much,_ Steve had told her.

Tamika looked unsettled, but by Steve, not the information that she and Wanda were codependent. _She relies on me._

 _That doesn't sound healthy._

 _And starting a civil war among superheroes for an assassin is?_

Young as she was, Tamika was perceptive. Quiet enough that Steve often forgot. He tried to work on that. She'd been through much, this young girl, and had proved herself ten times over. She was hardly old enough for anyone to be comfortable with her as an Avenger, but Steve wouldn't disrespect everything she had risked getting here by stonewalling her from the team because of _age._

Not after this.

"There are exceptions." Steve said, smiling. "Tony has the other kid on a probationary basis as well. Spider-Man is his gimmick. You remember him?"

Tamika nodded jerkily, "He's my age,"

"Yeah, he is. Talented. Good heart. Reminds a few people of you in some ways, but he doesn't replace you. We could use you, Tamika."

Tamika flushed, looking away. "I'm not that important, Steve. Vision can do all that I can do and _then_ some, and my invisibility hardly counts for much when you have Natasha. Instead of helping put bad guys away, I get _in_ the way."

Steve chuckled. "Nat's amazing but you and I both know that she's only human."

"And what am I?"

Ah.

"In need of guidance, I think. You have powers you barely understand, that frighten you. Maybe we can't comprehend just how powerful you — and your sister — can be, but we can try. We _want_ to try."

"We?"

"Me, Sam, Nat, Vision. Even Buck's a little fond of you these days," Steve grinned. Tamika's smile deepened with each fraction that it shrunk. "I can't promise you anything with Tony, okay? But he's trying. He wants the Avengers to work."

Just like that, a wall slammed down. Tamika broke eye contact, all her attention on her mathematics textbook. "Stark…" she murmured, consonants hard and sharp in a way Steve had only heard in the Maximoff twins' voices, "...he betrayed us, Steve."

Ouch.

Voice somehow steady, he reminded her, "He was doing what he thought was right."

Tamika dropped her highlighters, fingers twitching for the burns on her throat that weren't there. The bruises and scratches that _were_ there were all self-inflicted. Night terrors from her time with Ross.

(Sam, Clint and Lang hug him when he lets them out of their cell —Lang much longer than the others, but Steve lets him, given the circumstances. It's the girls who prove to be a problem.

He enters Tamika's cell, but her back is to him and it seems she is in a deep, deep sleep. He reaches out to shake her shoulder, to wake her up, but before he can touch her—

"Steve, don't." Comes Sam's voice. Steve stops before he is even aware of it. "Don't touch her. I'll handle it. Clint, you alright with Wanda?"

Clint sighs. " _I'm_ alright with Wanda. I don't think she'll be alright with me."

"She likes you best, man," Sam shrugs, creeping up beside Steve. "She probably won't explode your insides if you breathe in the same direction as her."

" _Probably_." Clint groans, then stretches out his shoulders, limbering up. "Alright, I'll take one for the team by waking up witchy while you deal with the napping mild-mannered teenager. Steve, can you—?"

A bit confused (and angry, honestly), Steve coughs. "Yeah, sure. Did something… happen?"

Opening Wanda's cell is easy. Trying not to eavesdrop on Sam is not. Neither, Steve thinks, muscles tightening like he wants to hit something, is finding out that Wanda is _collared_ and huddled in a corner wearing a _straightjacket._

Clint sees the look on his face and grins. It's a vicious look on him. "Ross happened."

Evidently.

From Tamika's cell, Sam whispers, "Hey, Tammy-Tam. It's me. You know my voice? Good. I'm gonna touch you now, alright? Just to take this collar off. Not gonna touch you anymore than necessary. Is that okay?"

Tamika's voice, high and cracked, "...Sam?"

 _Empty._ She sounds _empty._

"Yeah Tam, it's me."

"I don't-... _Sam._ Sam, it _hurts._ "

"Christ. I know, I know,"

" _Get it off_ , Sam — _Sam_ — I don't wanna _be here anymore Sam take it off take it oFF_ —"

"Aww, Tamika, no." Clint suddenly sniffs, crouching in front of Wanda, who is twitching from her catatonic staring. "Wanda? Calm down. You're safe now. The bastards who put you in here are gone, alright? Poof. I need you to not kill me as I take this collar off you. Can you do that?"

Wanda doesn't reply. Her head is tilted in the direction of Tamika's cries, growing in volume. Her hair is in her face. She doesn't appear to notice.

When Clint touches her collar, the last thing Steve expects is for Wanda to snarl, rear back, and _spit_ in Clint's face.

This is approximately when Tamika cries out, "Where's my _sister,_ Sam?!"

Clint winces. Steve narrows his eyes. Lang mutters something that sounds like, 'oh boy.'

And Wanda eyes _bleed_ scarlet.)

"He was wrong."

"He knows that now,"

" _Does_ he?"

Steve couldn't find it in himself to lie to her. "He's trying. That's all we can ever ask of someone."

"No," Tamika replied, eyes dark, "I don't agree with that. I don't care what he _tried_ to do, or what he is _trying_ to fixed. I don't believe in _almosts_ , they've never helped me before. Either Stark _does_ or he _doesn't._ "

An unforgiving point of view. Steve wondered how much of it came from her... and how much of it came from Wanda. "He won't hurt you again, Tamika. Not while I'm there."

Tamika's eyes flashed. Steve had the feeling his word didn't mean much to her these days. Wanda sighed and said, "He isn't lying, sister. ...Not right now."

 _Lying?_

"Tamika, I _will_ protect you—" Steve tried, confused.

"—while you're there, yes, Captain. She heard just fine." Wanda interrupted, eyes still fixed on the blurry horizon. Tamika looked down at her book, allowing her sister the spotlight. "What she is concerned about is how long you will actually be there. You have a habit of leaving us behind to the mercy of wolves and traitors."

Bucky.

Of course it was about Bucky again. Steve clenched his jaw. They weren't trying to start a fight, he had to remind himself. They were stating a _fact_. He had no right to get angry at them for it. None.

(But he gets angry anyway. He can't _help_ it.)

He had gone to Bucharest in search of Bucky, knowingly leaving Wanda to be watched as if she were a prisoner in her own home, had left his friends to be captured by a corrupt government, had almost killed Tony in the heat of the moment. All of it for Bucky. Steve couldn't promise that he wouldn't do it again, which was the worst part.

Unblinkingly, unflinchingly, _he would_ _do it again._

Wanda had screaming nightmares and haunted the halls at all hours like a ghost, empty-eyes and bone-white skin. She smeared black eyeliner on her eyes like war paint and dressed in scarlet like it was the blood of her enemies, and stood on railings with her arms spread and her eyes closed like she wanted nothing more than to _jump._ All because she'd been captured by someone she had been told, repeatedly even, that she could _trust._

 _Tony isn't the man you think he is,_ they had told her.

And he'd gotten her locked her up. Gotten her collared. _Muzzled_ her powers. Called her dangerous, weapon, nuclear bomb. Killer of families and creator of orphans. Witch. Other. Foreigner.

That was on Steve. He knew it was on him.

They would never have Wanda's complete trust again.

And because they would never have hers, they would never have Tamika's.

From the start, Steve had not wanted Tamika involved. But she refused to stay with Tony; not when Wanda was in danger, not when everyone in the building believed _Wanda_ was the danger, not when HYDRA was still everywhere and she couldn't trust any government official who she hadn't cleared personally.

Steve never wanted her to be in the middle. He never wanted her to turn on the TV and hear a million suits calling for her to come to heel like an attack dog. He never wanted her to find out that half the citizens of the world wanted her shipped back to "where she came from", as if she hadn't bled for America just as much as them, if not _more._ He never wanted her at that airport, fighting to incapacitate a boy her own age, staring a friend in the eye as she tried to rip out his arc reactor, sacrificing herself so he could grab Bucky and _run._

(Tamika did not haunt the halls as Wanda did. Instead, she isolated herself in her room, always sleeping sleeping _sleeping_ , waking only to eat bland bread before stumbling back to her room. She woke from her nightmares silently; moved only to sit up, stared at her lap until the sun was high in the sky and Sam or Clint or Steve or Bucky or Wanda checked up on her, only to find her passed out against the headboard from dehydration.)

He never wanted any of that for her.

(But _never wanting_ was in the same category as _trying_ for Tamika, and Steve might as well have enlisted her personally for this war for all the good his _never wanting_ did for her.)

Tamika watched him with narrow green eyes. She pulled her oversized plaid shirt tighter around herself and picked up the biro, looking down at her book. "I am tired," she said, shoulders a line of tension, "I am so exhausted."

"That's completely understandable — "

"I am so exhausted," Tamika uncharacteristically interrupted, "but I cannot sit idle while the world tears itself apart, not while I can help. I don't trust you, Steve, and I'm sorry about that. I don't trust Stark. But I will make the world a happier place, and if I have to do that with the Avengers, then I'll do it."

"Where Tamika goes, I will follow," Wanda continued, seamless. Her eyes were flat and sharp on Steve, and he was sure that he wasn't imagining the crackle of scarlet in her irises. "I will not fight for him. I will not fight for you. But I will fight for _her._ No one else can keep her safe except me. Those are our conditions, Steve: you do _not_ separate us. Not for anything."

Steve worked his jaw and stared the girls down. That wasn't practical or healthy. He could not, in good conscience, agree to something like that.

But as he stared at the women, they stared back. Unflinching. Hands wound together. Pictures of sleep deprived and _strength_ , and—

And this was not a battle Steve would win. That said nothing of the war ahead of them, but whether he liked it or not, Steve knew how to lose.

(Perhaps not _graciously_ , but...)

"We'll talk about it," He hedged.

Wanda nodded. Tamika's lips pursed. After exchanging a few more formalities that the meta-human's refused to indulge him with, Steve turned on his heels and left.

(... and if he felt as if he were turning his back to wolves?)

(Well, he'd brought that on himself, now hadn't he?)

.

* * *

.

 _"138 combat missions. That's how many I've flown, Tony. Every one of them could've been my last, but I flew them. Because the fight needed to be fought. It's the same with these Accords. I signed because it was the right thing to do. And yeah, this **sucks**. This is, uh... This is a bad beat. But it hasn't changed my mind. I don't think."_

.

* * *

.

Authors Note:

Wow! Long chapter! Shout of to **billy** , **bluejanes, enbi** , **tazedevil, N7 Jam** and **CompYES**. All of you guys helped so much with the construction of this chapter. Without every single one of you, I don't think any of this would have come together at all. I owe y'all my lives. Extra shout out to **CompYES,** who inspired my characterisation of Sam, and whose story Girl Friday is so amazing I couldn't resist throwing in a reference to it in the story. Anxiety protocols. Genius.

Chapter _is_ a little dry regarding action, I admit, but the character relations are _kind of_ important in Civil War, so I regret nothing. If you're confused about Tamika's powers/actions this chapter, PM me! I have an entire explanation at the ready for it! It's just too long for the authors note, so.

Hope you enjoyed?


	4. 00 liam maihi interlude

**Title:** Right Through Me

 **Summary:** When most of your life is spent living in the background, it can be a bit intimidating to be thrust to the forefronts of a dramatic narrative. Luckily, Tamika Maihi is a self insert, so you can trust her to always recover from a tragic backstory. — SI, gen.

 **Rating:** M

 **Words:** 2,475

 **Warnings:** Non-explicit mentions of substance (drug) abuse and gambling addiction!

 **Disclaimer:** Disclaimed

* * *

Under 21s rugby. That's where he is right now. Four years, that's how long it took: one to spiral, half of one to get help, half to relapse, one to quit lying to himself and build a steady foundation. Only just shutting the door on his teen years and he was a recovering drug addict; only he could.

"Maihi, with me!"

Or maybe he was just lying to himself. Maybe he wasn't that special after all and being a teenage drug addict slash rugby prodigy isn't rare at all. Maybe this wasn't a darkness he came upon honestly. Maybe it was forced on him and he wore it awkwardly, like a shirt two sizes too small. Maybe he had been low and this— sports, the ambiguous 'it', _everything_ — offered a temporary high and he was still an addict after all. Maybe he was humoring everyone.

By now, any attempt at happiness was half-hearted and reality would forever be blurred at the edges (just enough so he didn't have to care as much), but that had never mattered.

It did now: It had to.

"Yeah, Coach, coming!"

Like the drugs, this, too— devoting himself to cleanliness, existing in sobriety, doing _better_ than his own standards— wasn't a choice. Meaningful choices died with his father.

* * *

Dad and Tamika are gone for six months before they hear anything about either of them.

A bombing, they were told. _Sokovia is a war zone,_ they were told. _You have my condolences_.

(As if condolences stopped his little sister from being blown up.)

Mum fell off first. Gambling and shit. Put them right in debt in what seemed like no time at all: it was a sour goodbye to long showers and new shoes and school excursions.

Willmarr fell next. Found a new crowd, found a new kick, discovered a plant that burned away at the guilt and misery for as long as you held it in your lungs. Willmarr dragged Liam down with him in the kindest way possible for someone to: he offered Liam a choice with no strings attached. It wasn't his fault he didn't know that there wasn't a choice. No good choices. Not for Liam, anyway.

( _Don't leave.)_

Erik didn't fall. He was too good for it. Too stubborn. He was like dad that way. It was for the best. If he were anymore like mum, they wouldn't have survived— but they do. Achingly, resentfully, resisting every inch they are dragged, they survive. It's all because of Erik that they make it through it.

He shouldn't have had to pull them past the finish line. Liam knows that. He isn't so far gone that he doesn't understand that Erik was too young for what his family forced him to do, but he can't figure out where to even begin regarding the effort to reclaim Erik's childhood for him. So he apologizes every way except verbally and hopes it is enough.

(It isn't. He _knows_ it isn't, but he's been inactive so long that action is such a daunting thing on the horizon — he can't risk the storm. Not again.)

* * *

Tamika is alive.

She's right there, he can _see_ her. They can _all_ see her. She's _there_ ; panting, sweating, mouth moving and arms working and, oh God, she's so viciously _alive._ She's wearing a green plaid bush jacket two sizes too big for her. He knows it. He's seen it in his own wardrobe. (She still has it, she's kept it all this time, she hasn't forgotten about him— oh god, how could he have given up on her when she hasn't given up on them—)

It's her.

It's _her._

How can she be alive? How could they not have noticed? What is she doing still in Sokovia? What is she doing, _fighting_ for Sokovia?

What, what, what?

The news coverage consists of shaky footage from cheap phones with bad cameras. That doesn't mean Liam doesn't know who the lenses are pointed at. A wheeze and a blur of red. Iron Man. A roar and trembling earth. Hulk. A song and thunder. Thor. A hiss and a crackle. _Tamika._

"My baby, my baby girl, that's my baby girl," Mum's babbling. She's clinging to Willmarr's arm. Erik is clinging to hers. Where Mum is wailing, Erik's grief is silent. Cautious; Liam's little sister is alive, and she's a superhero.

 _(What.)_

* * *

Tamika doesn't reappear in the news and she doesn't reappear into their lives. Liam wonders if the familiar girl in the videos was really her at all. He keeps the doubts to himself. Erik and Mum are certain that Ghost is Tamika, and with the way Erik's hands shake whenever he reaffirms it, Liam's opinion is the last thing his resolve needs.

So. Tamika's alive. But she isn't here with them.

For some reason, the idea that she's chosen to stay away is almost as bad as her being dead.

The televisions are the ones they rely on for news.

It is the television that confirms what Liam isn't sure he actually knows.

 _Individuals Wanda Maximoff, a.k.a "Scarlet Witch" and Tamika Maihi, a.k.a. "Ghost," have now been officially declared fugitives by Secretary of Defense, Blahblahblah Ross…_

Maihi.

Tamika Maihi.

It's her. She's alive. She really is _alive._

"A criminal," Erik echoes, voice flat. "That's _bullshit_."

Mum doesn't clip him for the language. Obviously, she agrees.

The American station shows a picture of Wanda Maximoff in the middle of a Sokovian protest against American intervention. She's holding a boy's hand and screaming. She doesn't look like a superhero — she looks like a rioter. Liam's stomach sinks. The picture fades and he already knows, _he already knows_ —

The next picture is his baby sister wearing a threadbare grey nightgown, background flat concrete. There's something thick and restricting around her throat. Her hair, thick and curly in Liam's memories, hangs dry and frizzy. Her lips are chapped. She looks like she hasn't slept in a year.

She looks like a _criminal._

They all fall silent at the presence of the only clear picture they have of Tamika. At the media's flagrant disregard of her privacy. At their lack of respect for her. The audacity, he thinks, suddenly furious, to broadcast his sister like she's some fucking _thug_ and not the reason Sokovia didn't drop like a meteor and _wipe out the human race._

How _dare_ they.

* * *

They wait for her. She is their sister and their daughter and their family and they _wait for her._

She doesn't show up, she never shows up, but Liam has spent too long thinking that his little sister is dead when she's not been, when she has been halfway across the road being _tortured_ , and they wait. Quietly. Patiently.

It's faith, he thinks. A new thing for this family. Hope, faith, all that cliche shit— and he doesn't usually care for it, is the thing, because losing half the family makes a guy cynical in all sorts of expected and unexpected ways. Except they lost and gained (kind of) one of them back, and it's a miracle, is what that is. It's a miracle, because deep down Liam knows they don't deserve it, knows that they might not have treated her right the first time and the fact that they've been given a second chance is by the grace of _God_ , knows that there's a high probability that he's going to fuck up twice and then she'll never come back—

But until then, he can wait. He can start believing in faith and hope and prayers if it gives him one more miracle.

 _You brought her back to life,_ _so do me one more solid and_ _ **bring her home**_ _._

* * *

It's lunch. Willmarr is cleaning the yard, Erik is painting the fence, Mum is tending to the garden, and Liam is inside refilling the cordial jug when there's three knocks on the door. It's a busy Sunday, but even so, while Liam isn't excited about talking to some salesman, he can't just ignore the door.

He opens it, and nothing could have prepared him for who awaits him on the other side; cordial smashes all over the floor.

Tamika stands in the doorway of their home like she's unsure of her welcome, outfitted in a green plaid bush shirt too big for her. She's tall; a lot taller in real life. Liam's thrilled to note that he's still taller. There are scars. There are... _lots_ of scars, almost too many to count. Deep bags under her eyes. Her hair is tied back in a way Liam can't remember it ever being.

The Scarlet Witch is there, too. Holding her hand. Liam thinks, _she isn't yours,_ but can't linger on the thought.

 _Tamika_ , he thinks, but he can't speak at all. He stares. It's all he can do. _Ghost_ , is her nickname. It's accurate. She was dead. She was dead and then she was alive and then she was a dream and now she's here, standing in the door, fiddling with the ends of his shirt and staring everywhere but at his eyes.

"Hey," Tamika mutters. She shifts, looks at the Witch, then back at Liam's feet. Her voice is so _deep_ now, but still higher than Erik, who is conquering his puberty right now. She's still his little sister. "Uh, I— I don't know if—"

Whatever she's about to say, Liam can't say he cares one bit about it. He moves purely on instinct, not wondering if those new scars go deeper than the skin. He throws his arms around his baby sister like its an attack and hugs her tight enough that he can forget for a moment that he ever thought she was dead. He thinks he should say something like _welcome home_ or _about time_ or literally anything, anything, because it has to be better than his silence, right? Nothing comes to mind.

He squeezes her until he's convinced that she's real, and then finds it in himself to hold her tighter when he feels her body heave with sobs.

Welcome home. About time. We've been waiting.

"Don't leave again," is what comes out, and the words — _don't leave, don't leave, don't leave, what's keeping me here?_ — must have weighed as heavily on her as they did on him, because her knees give out, and for the first time since he initiated it, his little sister hugs him back. She's crying. Ugly, loud sobs that are coming from someplace deep inside of her. She hugs him back and she cries and for the first time in his life, Liam _understands_ her.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to stay away—"

"Just _stay_ ," Liam tells her. Whatever happened before doesn't matter. What happened before was that she _died._ She's alive now. That's all that matters. She's here.

She's done the hard part. Now all Liam and his family have to do is give her a reason to stay.

* * *

(Liam helps her with her suitcase as her dad gets into the truck. It's 2am and freezing cold, so he gives her his over-sized flannel coat and doesn't say a word about it. The others wait at the doorstep, silent like they're in mourning.

She closes the trunk and refuses to meet his eyes, but despite her best efforts, she can't pretend that he isn't crying. He's being quiet about it but he _can't stop sniffing._

When he speaks, his voice is small and thin. It isn't a tone she's ever heard on him before. "Don't leave." He mutters, just like he used to do when he was a kid. He meets her eyes for a fraction of a second before he looks at his shoes. "It isn't too late to change your mind."

Tamika has never been encouraged to speak her mind at the expense of others. There is something in her body blending her insides, and it's odd, because her stomach is turning and her throat is clogged but her blood runs cold and her bones are like steel. She is heavy with the grief of leaving her family behind but her heart feels hollow. She is both the chaos and the calm. The feelings conflict and turn her brain to mush. She doesn't have it in her to be self-conscious about her words at this point.

She hunches in on herself and replies, "What's keeping me here?"

Liam looks hurt. He keeps his eyes on the ground. " _We_ are," He says in a strained voice. " _Us_. Your _family_."

"And if I stay? What then?" She knows that after the novelty of her remaining wears off, things will go right back to the way they were. Perhaps with more animosity, at best. If she leaves, she will not be able to feel their resentment with the oceans between them. If she turns back and lets that plane take off without her, she will forever be the pariah.

"Don't worry, Li," She rubs her nose and steps away, eyes burning but face stony. She wants to cry but her body won't _let her_. "You won't miss me much."

And the only way she could say that without breaking down was because it was _true_. He was good at ignoring her when she _was_ there; it would be the easiest thing in the world to do it when she _wasn't_.

And so, in a few short hours, Tamika and her father board a plane to Sokovia.)

.

* * *

Authors Note:

Interlude about the family! Got a bit bored, wrote this before boarding my plane, and here we go. It's messy and I do apologize for that!


End file.
